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LinK: Edir Macedo, Brazil's Billionaire Bishop - Businessweek
Edir Macedo is 5-foot-6, slight, and 68 years old. He has deformed fingers, a sparse crown of graying hair, and more than 5 million followers, whose donations over the last 36 years have made him a billionaire. In Brazil, where he was born and raised, he is a major national figure, the subject of dozens of criminal inquiries, and the owner of Rádio & Televisão Record, a media conglomerate that runs the countrys second-largest television network. He is known to most everyone by the title he created for himself: He is O BispoThe Bishop. Macedo is the founder of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, a Pentecostal denomination specializing in prosperity theology, which links faith to financial success. He preaches twice a week, often in two different cities, and the sermons are fervently watched on church websites, his Facebook page, and the miniature TV sets that Brazilian taxi drivers like to keep on their dashboard. Now and then he holds outdoor events that draw crowds of half a million. In February he addressed 5,000 of his parishioners at one of his churches in Belo Horizonte, in southeastern Brazil. High overhead, a stained-glass cross lit by fluorescent bulbs took up most of the ceiling while a theater-size screen blew him up for the pews in the back. He paced back and forth on the stage, explaining the intersection of God and money. Which is the largest country in the world, economically speaking? Its America, the United States. Do you know why? Because way backthis is history, you can look it up on the Internetthe colonization was done by men who believed in the word of God. And they were tithers, he said. Thats why you see on the dollar bill: In God we trust. 
In Macedos teaching, tithing, or giving 10 percent of your income to the church, is a mandate from God. Tithing was never part of Brazils Catholic tradition, and, for Macedo, that explains many of the countrys problems. In Belo Horizonte that day, he quoted Malachi, a favorite of prosperity theologians, pointing to 3:10, where the Lord promises to the faithful tither that He will pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. A man of humble beginnings, Macedo offered his own success as proof. Our culture is retrograde, a stingy culture, a culture with no view of the future, he said. Only you can change this situation. Tithing is you on Gods altar, just as Jesus was Gods tithe for humanity.
Silvio Luís Martins de Oliveira, a prosecutor in São Paulo, says that Macedos promise of riches amounts to fraud. In a 2009 case that is just now being tried, he accuses Macedo and three high-ranking church members of conspiracy, money laundering, and undeclared international cash transfers. The preachers make use of the faith, desperation, or ambition of [their followers] to sell the idea that God and Jesus Christ only look upon those who contribute financially to the church, Oliveira wrote in a criminal complaint. In his description, the Universal Church enriches its leaders far more than its faithful.
Macedo is proud of his success, but turns questions about his wealth into questions of the spirit. He declined an in-person interview; in an e-mail, he writes: From the point of view of my faith in Jesus Christ, I am the richest man in the world.
Story: Brazil's Domestic Servants Get Work Equality
Whatever the semantics, he has prospered. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates his wealth at $1.2 billion, entirely because of his ownership of Rádio & Televisão Record. The conglomerates namesake TV network produces standard commercial fare: telenovelas (sometimes Biblical), sex-infused reality shows, and journalism that dwells on grisly crimes. Record also runs a cable news channel, a handful of radio stations, three newspapers, a film-production company, and even a small bank, as well as cable and satellite units scattered around the world.
Macedo purchased Record, then just a debt-ridden TV network, in 1989 for $45 million. The transaction led to an investigation by Brazils tax agency, which found that hed used interest-free loans from the Universal Church to fund it, and fined him for failing to declare the loans as income. In his defense, Macedo said hed bought Record on behalf of the church to create the countrys first evangelical TV network. The argument failed to convince tax inspectors and led prosecutors to file suit in 1997, seeking to strip Records broadcasting license on the grounds that Brazils constitution forbids religious institutions from owning radio or TV stations. In testimony for that case, Macedo acknowledged the loans, while changing tack to say that he had acquired Record for himself. The case dragged on for more than a decade until a federal judge, Leonel Ferreira, ruled in Macedos favor in 2011. In his decision, Ferreira wrote that the churchs transfer of cash to Macedo could imply that, far from being frontmen for the church, he and his deputies control the church absolutely and use it for their own benefit. But, he said, such speculation fell outside the limits of the case at hand.
Record grossed $1.1 billion in 2011, a good chunk of which came from the Universal Church. The church buys up to six hours of airtime each day, almost always after midnight, when advertising sales are scarce; during Records more profitable hours, the church runs its sermons on other networks. Silas Malafaia, one of Brazils best-known televangelists (and the wealthy leader of a different Pentecostal denomination), says he used to buy time at the going market rate in the 1990s, until one day the network raised its price tenfold. The church pays millions to Record, way more than the programming is worth, so that he can expand his TV network, Malafaia says. He uses a legal artifice for something unjust. Neither party has disclosed how much their arrangement is worth today, but in 1999, Records then-chief executive officer, Demerval Gonçalves, told the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper that the church provided 15 percent of the companys overall revenue. The church also pays Records publishing arm to print most of the 2.5 million copies of its weekly newspaper.
Edir Macedo is 5-foot-6, slight, and 68 years old. He has deformed fingers, a sparse crown of graying hair, and more than 5 million followers, whose donations over the last 36 years have made him a billionaire. In Brazil, where he was born and raised, he is a major national figure, the subject of dozens of criminal inquiries, and the owner of Rádio & Televisão Record, a media conglomerate that runs the countrys second-largest television network. He is known to most everyone by the title he created for himself: He is O BispoThe Bishop. Macedo is the founder of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, a Pentecostal denomination specializing in prosperity theology, which links faith to financial success. He preaches twice a week, often in two different cities, and the sermons are fervently watched on church websites, his Facebook page, and the miniature TV sets that Brazilian taxi drivers like to keep on their dashboard. Now and then he holds outdoor events that draw crowds of half a million. In February he addressed 5,000 of his parishioners at one of his churches in Belo Horizonte, in southeastern Brazil. High overhead, a stained-glass cross lit by fluorescent bulbs took up most of the ceiling while a theater-size screen blew him up for the pews in the back. He paced back and forth on the stage, explaining the intersection of God and money. Which is the largest country in the world, economically speaking? Its America, the United States. Do you know why? Because way backthis is history, you can look it up on the Internetthe colonization was done by men who believed in the word of God. And they were tithers, he said. Thats why you see on the dollar bill: In God we trust. 
In Macedos teaching, tithing, or giving 10 percent of your income to the church, is a mandate from God. Tithing was never part of Brazils Catholic tradition, and, for Macedo, that explains many of the countrys problems. In Belo Horizonte that day, he quoted Malachi, a favorite of prosperity theologians, pointing to 3:10, where the Lord promises to the faithful tither that He will pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. A man of humble beginnings, Macedo offered his own success as proof. Our culture is retrograde, a stingy culture, a culture with no view of the future, he said. Only you can change this situation. Tithing is you on Gods altar, just as Jesus was Gods tithe for humanity.
Silvio Luís Martins de Oliveira, a prosecutor in São Paulo, says that Macedos promise of riches amounts to fraud. In a 2009 case that is just now being tried, he accuses Macedo and three high-ranking church members of conspiracy, money laundering, and undeclared international cash transfers. The preachers make use of the faith, desperation, or ambition of [their followers] to sell the idea that God and Jesus Christ only look upon those who contribute financially to the church, Oliveira wrote in a criminal complaint. In his description, the Universal Church enriches its leaders far more than its faithful.
Macedo is proud of his success, but turns questions about his wealth into questions of the spirit. He declined an in-person interview; in an e-mail, he writes: From the point of view of my faith in Jesus Christ, I am the richest man in the world.
Story: Brazil's Domestic Servants Get Work Equality
Whatever the semantics, he has prospered. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates his wealth at $1.2 billion, entirely because of his ownership of Rádio & Televisão Record. The conglomerates namesake TV network produces standard commercial fare: telenovelas (sometimes Biblical), sex-infused reality shows, and journalism that dwells on grisly crimes. Record also runs a cable news channel, a handful of radio stations, three newspapers, a film-production company, and even a small bank, as well as cable and satellite units scattered around the world.
Macedo purchased Record, then just a debt-ridden TV network, in 1989 for $45 million. The transaction led to an investigation by Brazils tax agency, which found that hed used interest-free loans from the Universal Church to fund it, and fined him for failing to declare the loans as income. In his defense, Macedo said hed bought Record on behalf of the church to create the countrys first evangelical TV network. The argument failed to convince tax inspectors and led prosecutors to file suit in 1997, seeking to strip Records broadcasting license on the grounds that Brazils constitution forbids religious institutions from owning radio or TV stations. In testimony for that case, Macedo acknowledged the loans, while changing tack to say that he had acquired Record for himself. The case dragged on for more than a decade until a federal judge, Leonel Ferreira, ruled in Macedos favor in 2011. In his decision, Ferreira wrote that the churchs transfer of cash to Macedo could imply that, far from being frontmen for the church, he and his deputies control the church absolutely and use it for their own benefit. But, he said, such speculation fell outside the limits of the case at hand.
Record grossed $1.1 billion in 2011, a good chunk of which came from the Universal Church. The church buys up to six hours of airtime each day, almost always after midnight, when advertising sales are scarce; during Records more profitable hours, the church runs its sermons on other networks. Silas Malafaia, one of Brazils best-known televangelists (and the wealthy leader of a different Pentecostal denomination), says he used to buy time at the going market rate in the 1990s, until one day the network raised its price tenfold. The church pays millions to Record, way more than the programming is worth, so that he can expand his TV network, Malafaia says. He uses a legal artifice for something unjust. Neither party has disclosed how much their arrangement is worth today, but in 1999, Records then-chief executive officer, Demerval Gonçalves, told the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper that the church provided 15 percent of the companys overall revenue. The church also pays Records publishing arm to print most of the 2.5 million copies of its weekly newspaper.
