BANK’S €18M BATTLE WITH THE PASTOR-PRENEURS

By: Michael O’Farrell

Investigations Editor

IT’S Thursday afternoon and just inside the half-closed gates of Ireland’s largest Evangelist church, three security guards cautiously eye up anyone who approaches. Their mission is to prevent court-appointed receivers from entering and seizing the building on behalf of Bank of Scotland Ireland, which is owed €18m by the Victory Christian Fellowship – the Evangelist group that operates the church in Firhouse, south Dublin.

The borrowings were largely used to construct the spectacular auditorium that became Victory’s church when it officially opened in 2009.

But for more than a week now, church members have succeeded in preventing the bank from taking possession – partly by confronting the receivers from Grant Thornton with Alsatians when they tried to enter the grounds on May 31. The stand-off has exposed some of the extraordinary business – including €16m of State money paid out for managing asylumseeker hostels – behind the facade of the evangelical Christian church that welcomes its flock each week.

Claiming they have God on their side, the leaders of the church – Pastor Brendan Hade, his wife Sheila and their colleague, Pastor Gerry Byrne – have disobeyed a High Court order appointing the receivers. They have also ignored subsequent injunctions forbidding them from preventing access to Victory’s impressive Firhouse HQ and two other facilities in Westland Row and Stillorgan.

Even a High Court attachment and committal order granted on Friday – meaning they can now be jailed for contempt of court – has not softened their determination. The bizarre stand-off has resulted in agents acting for the receiver keeping a rotating, 24-hour watch from a shopping centre car park across the road as church members come and go.

Inside the ultra-modern 6,000sq.m Victory Centre, staff have been instructed to continue on as normal.

‘There’s no receivers here… it’s not in receivership, basically, is the easiest way of putting it,’ said a woman at reception, who said her name was Fiona and that she was the events manager. ‘The place is open as normal. We are open for business,’ she told the Irish Mail on Sunday when we visited on Thursday.

‘I don’t know what’s been happening.

The only statement we’ve been given here, to the employees, is continue as normal.’ When asked if the receivers would get past the gate next time they try to enter, her response is immediate. ‘Probably not,’ she replies with a smile, declining to elaborate.

Beside her, a frosted glass wall is inscribed with phrases such as ‘Give freely and become wealthy’ and ‘Be stingy and lose everything.’ The inscriptions provide a none-toosubtle hint at what funds this stateof-the-art, 1,000-seater church, which has its own restaurant, a Starbucks and a sound and lighting system to rival a major concert venue.

Week after week, swaying worshippers listen to passionate sermons and Christian rock music. The congregation of more than 700 is encouraged to make donations in return for salvation, special blessings and cures for all manner of maladies.

‘Back problems are our speciality,’ Pastor Hade told an interviewer recently. At each sermon, shaded envelopes are passed out for donations.

Blue is for cash, cheque or credit card donations to the building fund, white is for a standing order mandate for the same purpose, and yellow is for a general donation for any other fellowship expense.

If each member gives €10 a week, that nets about €30,000 a month from the Firhouse church alone. All of this, as well as other Victory churches in Galway, Dublin city centre and Carlow, is the brainchild of electrical engineer Mr Hade and painter and decorator Mr Byrne. The story of how they went from tradesmen to pastors is truly extraordinary and involves a colourful cast including a Rolex-wearing Texan preacher who fled Ireland in 2011, and a controversial Nigerian pastor from London who was banned from being a director of any Irish company in 2007 following a scandal that hit the headlines.

Along the way Mr Hade and his wife, also a pastor, have opened and closed a number of firms, generated millions from State contracts to house asylum-seekers and invested in property. Mr Hade declined repeated approaches from the MOS to speak this week but has spoken in the past of how he started the Victory Christian Fellowship with just a handful of members in the front room of his home more than 20 years ago.

‘I had my own business electrical contracting, and materially we were okay but at the same time there was something missing,’ he said.

Using videotapes sent from the US, he and his wife began two years of bible study before beginning to organise. A property in Westland Row became the Fellowship’s first permanent centre in the late 1990s and from the millennium onwards, Mr Hade and Victory began making serious money from Department of Justice contracts to house asylum-seekers in two Dublin centres and one more in Carlow.

The first contract, for the use of Milverton House in Co. Carlow to house asylum-seekers, began in 2000. The building was jointly owned by the Hades and Mr Byrne, but State records show payments were made to Mr Hade. By the time the rolling contract ended in 2005, he had been paid €1.63m. A similar contract for Kilmacud House in Dublin began in 2001. This time the funds were paid to The Trustees of the Victory Christian Fellowship.

In total, €10.25m was paid out until March 2010. The trustees of Victory are Mr and Mrs Hade and Mr Byrne.

Kilmacud House has now become one of the Victory properties to which receivers are being refused access.

A third centre, also in Dublin – Kilmarnock House in Killiney – also secured asylum housing contracts.

This time, records showed that a Brian and Brendan Hade were paid €4.16m between 2003 and 2007 for their contract. The Hades’ asylumseeker business attracted controversy in 2004 when 100 residents had to be moved from Kilmarnock after a State inspection found serious concerns relating to health and safety, fire safety and food.

The three buildings earned a total of €16,049,231 over 10 years. During this period, Mr Hade was also branching out in the Evangelist community, forging links with the kind of preachers who have been described as pastor-preneurs because of the manner in which they apply aggressive business methods to generate money to spread the word.

Between 2001 and 2003, he was a director of a Galway group Abundant Life, which was run by controversial American husband-and-wife team Kevin and Heather Sanford until they absconded in 2011 on foot of a High Court order to pay €160,000 in overdue rent, penalties and interest.

After the ruling, the Sanfords, who were well known for their expensive tastes, which included a Rolex watch, diamond rings and a Spanish villa told them to move to Texas.

As they left, they handed over their church and donating congregation to Mr and Mrs Hade.

Another connection forged at this time involved an ill-fated investment with Nigerian-born London Evangelist David Crownborn and his wife Esther who, in 2004, set up a company called Global Mobile Vision (GMV).

Director-shareholders of the business included Mr and Mrs Hade, and Mr Byrne was also a director. GMV was set up to generate mobile phone content for the Evangalist market in the US but collapsed in less than a year with unpaid debts and amid disturbing allegations.

Raising the matter in the Dáil at the time, Independent TD Finian McGrath said employees had approached him with allegations of exploitation, intimidation, breach of rights, dismissals, failure to pay staff, mandatory working, threats and sexual harassment.

He said he had been told of incidents where members of staff, especially female employees, were asked to give managers ‘hugs’.

When the firm was liquidated, employees were found to be owed €160,000 and the Revenue Commissioners were owed €150,000. But that wasn’t Mr Byrne’s first brush with Revenue. In 2001 he was on their list of defaulters for failing to file income tax returns. With his occupation listed as ‘painter’, he got one conviction and a €875 fine.

Mr Crownborn and his wife now live in Tampa, Florida, where they’ve set up a new church having been banned from acting as company directors in Ireland. Unfazed by these associations, Mr Hade continued to work in Ireland although a number of his family’s firms have been dissolved following losses in recent years.

These include a nail and beauty salon in Kilkenny, an alarm installation company in Dublin and a toolhire company in Rathfarnham. His original electronics firm – Hade Ltd – continues to trade but posted losses of just over €8,000 in 2011.

Despite the range of setbacks, he has still amassed a significant property portfolio.

This includes a luxury family home in Rathfarnham, his original business address for Hade electronics on Rathfarnham’s main street, four apartments in Dublin city centre, an apartment in Waterford (jointly owned with Mr Byrne) and an apartment in Salthill in Galway.

In a recent interview, Mr Hade said his business successes had allowed him to offer his services to the Victory Christian Fellowship for free. But because the centre is run as a charitable trust, no public accounts are filed or made publicly available and it is impossible to see how the centre’s donations are spent.

One thing is clear, though. They were not being spent – or they were not sufficient – to repay the millions owed to Bank of Scotland.

iosinvestigations@gmail.com How Bible videos from the US helped to bring ‘prosperity gospel’ here THE Victory Christian Fellowship was founded more than two decades ago by Dublin electrician Brendan Hade and his wife Sheila after they studied to become evangelist pastors via videos sent from the United States.

Although far from mainstream in Ireland, the fellowship has been on RTÉ’s Sunday Morning Service and on Ryan Tubridy’s 2fm show, and Jedward once visited their HQ.

The fellowship describes itself as a non-denominational church that welcomes ‘people from every country, every creed, and every tradition’.

The aim is ‘to connect everyone everywhere with the truth of God’s word and help individuals develop a personal and real relationship with Jesus Christ’.

But its activities also appear to be closely aligned to what is known as the ‘prosperity gospel’ – the controversial belief that God will reward you with prosperity on earth if you believe in the Gospel and donate to your pastors.

Those leading such congregations have been called ‘pastorpreneurs’. This concept has enriched scores of US TV evangelists such as Creflo Dollar whose preaching has funded a Rolls Royce, a private jet and multimillion dollar homes and apartments. Mr Dollar and many others like him throughout the world have courted controversy for promising salvation and cures in return for donations.

Victory has been accused by critics as being an adaptation of the same principle.

Its critics include Mike Garde of Dialogue Ireland, an independent trust that monitors new religious movements and cults.

Mr Garde said he had been receiving requests for help from members of Victory Christian Fellowship for 20 years. ‘Our concern is for people’s human rights in a situation where their rationale is being clouded by a group which uses its belief to make money as well as to preach.’ Mr Garde spoke of several cases where people had come for help having lost large sums they could not afford to donate.

‘Our concern is that people who can’t afford it are in financial trouble because of their relationship with this group.’