Newsweek‘s Financial Connections to a Bona Fide Christian Cult

In the ongoing money laundering investigation into Newsweek Media Group’s dealings with a Christian cult known as “The Community,” founded by Korean pastor David Jang, Paste has discovered some previously unpublished connections.

The story first surfaced in mid-January with a bizarre, alarming piece in the New York Post, when Keith J. Kelly reported that federal law enforcement agents had raided Newsweek’s Manhattan headquarters. A couple weeks later, BuzzFeed released sections of a report detailing how the magazine had been purchasing web traffic in order to inflate its viewership and secure a major advertising contract with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. A few days later, The Post followed up, reporting that several top Newsweek staffers—including editor-in-chief Bob Roe—had been suddenly fired for investigating Newsweek Media Group’s financial ties to Olivet University, the religious school founded by Jang. According to its 990 filings, Olivet’s net annual revenue jumped from $9,109 to $8,540,404 between 2011 and 2015.

Rumors of the connections between the cult and the media group had been circulating ever since media newcomers and Jang disciples Etienne Uzac and Johnathan Davis bought the outlet in 2013. In 2014, the connections were documented by Mother Jones in an investigative report that came out after IBT Media Group purchased Newsweek. It turned out that Olivet University was using students through the International Visa Program to work for IBT.

Insiders that spoke with Paste on background believed the company heads—Uzac, Davis, and Dev Pragad—had been using the publication as a front to raise money for The Community by way of Olivet, which is headed by Davis’ wife, Tracy. Many described slavish content-milling, late paychecks, and only sporadic periods when the company had money.

And yet, the story ran much deeper, as The Wall Street Journal reported last week. Federal investigators are looking into a series of loans that Newsweek Media Group took out between 2015 and 2016 from a number of “small Midwestern and Western banks.” These loans were used to repeatedly lease the same servers from a company known as Oikos Networks, Inc.

The Journal reported that the investigators were trying to find a connection between “Oikos executives” and The Community, specifically Olivet University and World Olivet Assembly.

Despite the fact that Olivet’s total annual income in 2015 was $19.55 million, which is remarkably close to that of what Buzzfile lists as the annual income for Oikos thus far, a concrete connection has proved elusive—until now.

Up until October 2016, Oikos was one of several companies listed at 33 Whitehall in New York City, on the 8th floor. Incidentally, this is also the address of several media properties owned by the World Olivet Assembly and IBT Media according to a 2014 Medium post by former IBT employee Benjamin Reeves of Worth Magazine, as well as another Olivet Ministry affiliate, 33 Universal, which used to be headed by IBT co-founder Johnathan Davis.