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Newsweek Publishes Critical Piece On Company After Staffers Threaten To Resign

ramonmercado

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This could just as well fit in Conspiracy: a Korean Cult Chief who thinks, he's jesus now controls Newsweek. Investigations into Newsweek by the Manhattan District Attorney, editors and journalists being sacked to prevent the story being reported on. The World Olivet Assembly and their Guru David Jang is behind this morass of mysteries.

Newsweek publishes critical piece on company after staffers threaten to resign
by Hadas Gold @CNNMoneyFebruary 21, 2018: 9:59 AM ET

Late Monday night Newsweek's acting editor-in-chief, four senior editors and two reporters were ready to quit. After months of drama at the magazine, including a raid by the Manhattan District Attorney's office, the abrupt firings of their executive editor and editor-in-chief and questions about their website traffic and ad revenue, they were ready to take a stand.

Their bosses at Newsweek Media Group were, sources familiar with the situation told CNN, trying to block a story they were working on looking into NMG's connection to Olivet University, a Christian school founded by a church run by a Korean-American pastor named David Jang.

The connections between Jang, Olivet and Newsweek Media Group, have been the source of intense speculation and several investigative reports from other outlets over the years. Though staffers would make often make jokes about working for "the church" or a "cult," multiple current and former staffers told CNN that, though they knew five of the company's executives were part of the church and were directly connected to Olivet University, they never felt their direct influence on their work -- only a constant pressure to hit higher and higher traffic goals.

But that changed in January with a Manhattan District Attorney raid at NMG's office and investigators' removal of 18 servers as part of, according to the New York Post, an investigation into the financial connections between the company and Olivet University. Newsweek reported it was related to loans used to procure the servers.

Multiple staffers said they felt they had to report on their parent company, especially if it was under a criminal investigation. To them, it was a question of journalistic ethics -- and of proving that they worked in an independent newsroom. But in the course of reporting on the story, editor-in-chief Bob Roe and executive editor Ken Li and reporter Celeste Katz were fired for trying to report on their own company. NMG co-founder Jonathan Davis told editors in a meeting that the reporting had harmed potential business deals, according to a source with knowledge of the meeting. More than a dozen staffers resigned as a result of the firings and their aftermath. ...

http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/20/media/newsweek-staff-olivet-university/index.html
 
Now Olivet may be dealing in counterfeit goods and money laundering

A North Carolina judge ordered the arrest of a Chinese pastor on Monday in a counterfeit goods case that has drawn the attention of federal investigators looking into whether a church led by cleric David Jang was laundering money for criminals in the United States and China.

Whether or not Rev. JianGang "Frank" Lan returns to the United States from China to face trial, his case could be significant, law enforcement officials told Newsweek, for ongoing investigations into potential illegal activity by Jang's network of churches, businesses and education establishments, collectively known as Olivet.

While Jang's followers have been in legal trouble for nearly a decade, this is the first time that prosecutors have charged a pastor from any church linked to Olivet or that any criminal charge has pointed to a connection with anyone in China.

An arrest warrant on counterfeiting charges has been issued for Pastor Frank Lan, who has fled to China. Todd Roper, district court judge for Orange and Chatham counties, set bail at $1 million for Lan, who left for China after being charged with possession of counterfeit goods in 2019 following the discovery of thousands of fake Cartier bracelets. Their value, if genuine, was said at the time to have been over $24 million, making it the biggest such seizure in the state.

Lan had been in possession of close to 7,000 bracelets and he had been selling them for $50 to $100 on Facebook and Craigslist, Special Prosecutor Michael Putney Jr. told the court on Monday. He said that Lan had left the country in 2021 and has not returned. ...

Three senior law enforcement officials told Newsweek on condition of anonymity that they suspected links from the case to Chinese organized crime and drug cartels, which look to China to buy the precursor chemicals needed to make the powerful opioid fentanyl that has been behind a surge of deadly drug overdoses in the U.S. ...

Frank Lan was no minor disciple of David Jang.

After immigrating to the United States from China, he attended Olivet University in California. According to a family friend who had been a member of his congregation at Lan's Deer Park Community Church in Chapel Hill, Lan also spent time in Missouri, the location for the headquarters of Olivet Assembly USA, the American arm of Jang's global denomination.

He was working in China as recently as April on Jang-related e-commerce businesses, according to two former Olivet members who are still in touch with members of the community.

The two former members of Jang's sect told Newsweek that they recently discussed Frank Lan during interviews about Olivet with agents of the Department of Homeland Security. They declined to be identified because they were cooperating with the investigation. ...

Newsweek is co-owned by a member and a former member of Olivet. The owners had no influence or prior review of this story or any others related to this investigation.

https://www.newsweek.com/chinese-pastor-ordered-arrested-feds-circle-olivet-christian-sect-1719573
 
Now Olivet may be dealing in counterfeit goods and money laundering

A North Carolina judge ordered the arrest of a Chinese pastor on Monday in a counterfeit goods case that has drawn the attention of federal investigators looking into whether a church led by cleric David Jang was laundering money for criminals in the United States and China.

Whether or not Rev. JianGang "Frank" Lan returns to the United States from China to face trial, his case could be significant, law enforcement officials told Newsweek, for ongoing investigations into potential illegal activity by Jang's network of churches, businesses and education establishments, collectively known as Olivet.

While Jang's followers have been in legal trouble for nearly a decade, this is the first time that prosecutors have charged a pastor from any church linked to Olivet or that any criminal charge has pointed to a connection with anyone in China.

An arrest warrant on counterfeiting charges has been issued for Pastor Frank Lan, who has fled to China. Todd Roper, district court judge for Orange and Chatham counties, set bail at $1 million for Lan, who left for China after being charged with possession of counterfeit goods in 2019 following the discovery of thousands of fake Cartier bracelets. Their value, if genuine, was said at the time to have been over $24 million, making it the biggest such seizure in the state.

Lan had been in possession of close to 7,000 bracelets and he had been selling them for $50 to $100 on Facebook and Craigslist, Special Prosecutor Michael Putney Jr. told the court on Monday. He said that Lan had left the country in 2021 and has not returned. ...

Three senior law enforcement officials told Newsweek on condition of anonymity that they suspected links from the case to Chinese organized crime and drug cartels, which look to China to buy the precursor chemicals needed to make the powerful opioid fentanyl that has been behind a surge of deadly drug overdoses in the U.S. ...

Frank Lan was no minor disciple of David Jang.

After immigrating to the United States from China, he attended Olivet University in California. According to a family friend who had been a member of his congregation at Lan's Deer Park Community Church in Chapel Hill, Lan also spent time in Missouri, the location for the headquarters of Olivet Assembly USA, the American arm of Jang's global denomination.

He was working in China as recently as April on Jang-related e-commerce businesses, according to two former Olivet members who are still in touch with members of the community.

The two former members of Jang's sect told Newsweek that they recently discussed Frank Lan during interviews about Olivet with agents of the Department of Homeland Security. They declined to be identified because they were cooperating with the investigation. ...

Newsweek is co-owned by a member and a former member of Olivet. The owners had no influence or prior review of this story or any others related to this investigation.

https://www.newsweek.com/chinese-pastor-ordered-arrested-feds-circle-olivet-christian-sect-1719573

Feds tighten noose.

Federal law enforcement is looking for information on World Olivet Assembly chief Mark Spisak, the first sign that a money laundering investigation into a small American Bible college has reached the top of a global Christian denomination.

Spisak, a theologian who once served in the Olivet sect in Britain, is one of the most senior disciples of Korean-American cleric David Jang and is now General Secretary of the World Olivet Assembly, a church that says it has followers in "every region of the world."

The company that publishes Newsweek is locked in a legal dispute with the World Olivet Assembly and several institutions connected to Jang and his followers as part of a battle between the magazine's two shareholders—a current member of the Olivet sect and a former one.

https://www.newsweek.com/olivet-ass...under-scrutiny-money-laundering-probe-1768468
 
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