After a bombshell report detailing a secret $100 billion investment fortune owned by the Mormon Church surfaced, Roger Clarke, head of the LDS investment fund called Ensign Peak Advisors, told the Wall Street Journal that the church kept a lid on the size of their financial stockpile because they feared the knowledge would dissuade church members from tithing.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
Mr. Clarke said he believed church leaders were concerned that public knowledge of the fund's wealth might discourage tithing.
"Paying tithing is more of a sense of commitment than it is the church needing the money," Mr. Clarke said. "So they never wanted to be in a position where people felt like, you know, they shouldn't make a contribution."
Clarke and former Ensign employees claim that the Mormon investment firm created a system of more than a dozen shell companies to make its stock investments harder to track.