Two Toronto charities have status revoked

[Guest guest]

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/926820--two-toronto-charities-have-status-re\

voked

Two Toronto charities have status revoked

Published On Mon Jan 24 2011

Raveena Aulakh

Staff reporter

Two different charities, one Toronto address.

One charity, Operation Save Canada Teenagers, claims to help teenagers steer

clear of drugs and gangs.

The other, Revival Time Ministries International, calls itself an evangelistic

missionary that offers leadership training and community development programs.

But the Canada Revenue Agency says neither charity spent donations of more than

$3.7 million on such charitable activities, and this month revoked their status.

In scathing audits, the CRA says the two charities falsified bank statements and

did not give a complete record of donation receipts. The Federal agency reported

discrepancies in receipts made available to its investigators and said the

charities dilly-dallied over repeated requests to provide records.

But Mokwe, founder of the two charities who also calls himself `reverend'

and runs a church, refuted all allegations. " Everything they are saying is

trash. It's not authentic, " he told the Star in an interview at a strip mall

office on Dufferin St. this week.

Mokwe said that he is appealing the revocations in Federal Court. " We are asking

them to reinstate us immediately, " he said.

The records supplied by the charities to Federal authorities were disorganized

and " inadequate, " according to the audits.

In 2006 and 2007, Operation Save Canada Teenagers reported charitable spending

of $654,043 and $1,057,707, respectively, but auditors found no evidence any was

spent on charitable activities.

The taxman found similar problems at Revival Time Ministries International,

where charity officials reported charitable expenditures of $730,663 in 2006 and

$1,432,160 in 2007. Again, CRA investigators say there is no proof the money was

for used for charitable purposes.

" We also have serious concerns that the bank statements provided were

manufactured for the purpose of our audit, " said the auditors.

Investigators also say they have still not received complete documentation for

the charities for 2006 and 2007, first requested more than two years ago. When

investigators persisted, they were told that all the information was stored in a

rented warehouse but it was sold when the organizations failed to pay rent.

The charities had earlier told the CRA that the two organizations' records were

stored on a computer and lost due to a malfunction.

CRA also accuses the charity of providing false bank statements from Scotiabank

and RBC — the organization didn't have any accounts with the two banks,

according to the audit.

The Federal revenue agency did not include the year 2008 in its audit for

Operation Save Canada Teenagers, but charity documents on the CRA website

indicate another $848,146 in receipts was handed out in this period.

Receipts worth $981,223 were also handed out in 2008 for Revival Time Ministries

International according to documents, but again the CRA did not include it in

the audit.

The two charities' websites are still soliciting donations despite losing

charitable status. A CRA spokesperson said she could not comment on specifics of

the case due to confidentiality provisions.

Like the finances of the two charities he runs, little is known about

Mokwe.

He says he immigrated from Cameroon about six years ago and registered Operation

Save Canada Teenagers as a charity in 2006. He claims the idea took root in

Botswana where he noticed a high rate of HIV infection among people between the

ages of 15 and 29.

He says he started a school to educate young people there and the results were

" encouraging. " He decided to continue to work with teens when he moved to

Canada, he said.

Initially, seven board members, including his wife, t Mokwe, were listed in

the charities' annual tax returns, according to the CRA documents.

Mokwe, however, provided no details of the two charities to the Star.

The website of Revival Time Ministries International says it was started in 1997

by the couple. In an interview, Mokwe would not explain how it started in 1997,

several years before he says he arrived in Canada.

It is not clear where the two charities were located before 2008, but Mokwe has

left a trail of unpaid rent at two different office spaces between 2008 and

2010.

He rented two suites in an office building on Oakdale Rd. near Finch Ave. from

May 2008 to April 2009. The property manager told the Star that rent was always

a problem and Mokwe was locked out several times.

The manager, who did not want to be named, said Mokwe still owes a few months'

rent.

Mokwe said he doesn't " owe them a dime. "

In May 2009, he moved to an office building on Finch Ave. at Weston Rd. where

his office was raided by a team of three CRA auditors in October 2010. Building

management said they locked him out days later for failing to pay two months

rent.

" I didn't know what he did here, " said Carol , who runs The Beauty Shoppe

in the same complex. But she remembers the CRA taking away boxes of papers and a

computer.

One neighbour at the office complex described him as a charismatic,

smooth-talking man " who could make you believe that he will eventually come up

with the rent. "

Mokwe, who now lives in a two-storey house near Jane St. and Exbury Ave. with

his wife, works from an office in a small strip plaza at Dufferin St. and

Ave.

On a recent afternoon, he was there working on his appeal to the Federal court.

Dressed in a dark suit, beige silk shirt and tie, Mokwe acknowledged he hadn't

paid rent for " maybe a month " at the office space near Finch Ave. and Weston Rd.

He said he was in the process of suing property management for " the loss they

have caused. "

He declined to answer any questions about how the charities raised the money or

how it was spent.

" I don't have any information for you right now, " he said.

" All I can say is we were wrongly revoked. "