Mountain of Fire and Miracle Ministries has
lost £150,000 to theft.
General Overseer of the mega church, Pastor
Daniel Olukoya, on Saturday, admitted that the
money is missing and revealed that his former
employee, who is a pastor, stole the church’s
funds in the United Kingdom, UK.
In a statement signed by his media aide,
Collins Edomaruse, and made available to
reporters on Saturday, he said the employee
paid the £150,000 Charity’s fund into his
personal account and conspired with external
auditors to shield the income from discovery.
“Fortunately, all the people that took money
illegally are still alive. The genesis of this
allegation is that the lease of one of our
branches in London contained a clause which
stipulated that any party who broke the lease
for any reason before its expiration would pay
a penalty of £150,000 to the other party.
“It happened that the owner of the property
broke the lease and sold the property to a
third party which necessitated the church
relocating from the building.
“The property owners honoured their
obligation and paid the penalty sum of
£150,000 which the pastor of that branch
somehow found a way of paying into his
personal account without informing the
headquarters and conspired with the external
auditors to shield that income from discovery.
It was much later that a member of that
branch brought to the attention of
headquarters that such amount of money had
been received by the pastor,” he added.
He further explained that the church’s
headquarters immediately set up a panel of
investigation to uncover the fraud and to give
fair hearing to the pastor concerned.
According to the statement, the pastor
attended the sitting of the panel and
unequivocally admitted he stole the fund.
The statement added that the General
Overseer issued the pastor an ultimatum in
writing to pay back the money within 48 hours
whereupon he promised to re-mortgage his
house in London to comply.
