Scientology

Ursula Caberta: the holes are being plugged by financial support from the USA.

Hamburg, Germany
April 7, 2000
Hamburger Anzeigen und Nachrichten The trial in the sect suit against the Interior Agency's Work Group begins today in the Hanseatic City [of Hamburg].

Hamburg (lno) In the assessment of the Interior Agency's Work Group, the Scientology Organization in the Hanseatic City is "practically bankrupt." The director of the Work Group, Ursula Caberta, said yesterday, "Charges of fraudulent bankruptcy have already been filed against the organization." She said the Scientologists in Hamburg are keeping their heads above water "only with financial injections from the USA." Even the purchase of an approximately 20 million mark building as a new organization center in Hamburg is said to have been possible only with money from the U.S. center. Caberta pointed out that the Scientology Organization was not regarded as a religious organization, but as a "profit-oriented commercial operation."

That assessment is also shared by U.S. Scientology critic Bob Minton. Minton, who is regarded by the organization as "public enemy number one," said in the Hanseatic City that the primary interest of Scientology's management was to acquire as much money as possible: "That has nothing to do with religion."

Minton described how Scientology's "paramilitary intelligence agency, OSA, put pressure on opponents with Mafia methods." He said he had been threatened in calls to both his family and to his business associates. Just the prior month, he said, attorneys from the organization had offered his parents to take over court costs if they would sue their son.

That is not something that a church does. That is the dealing of a totalitarian group which puts itself in peoples' way and destroys their lives," Minton believed. He criticized the fact that the totalitarian aspects of Scientology are not recognized in the United States.

Today begins the first trial in the Hamburg Administrative Court of a Scientology complaint against the Interior Agency's Work Group.

--- Hamburg, Germany
April 8, 2000
Bild Hamburg companies can continue to demand that business partners sign a statement as to whether they belong to the Scientology organization or not. The so-called "technology statement" was drawn up by the Interior Ministry's Work Group on Scientology (AGS). A complaint against the AGS was dismissed yesterday in the Administration Court.

Argument: With or without the statement, companies have the free choice of selecting with whom they do business.

Scientology intends to contest the decision in Superior Administrative Court.