Feb. 16, 1984: Uruguay Is Fertile Soil For Moon Church Money (https://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/16/world/uruguay-is-fertile-soil-for-moon-church-money.html) (The New York Times)
Nov. 28, 1998: Moonies Build A New Garden of Eden in Brazil's Fertile Cowboy Country (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/moonies-build-a-new-garden-of-eden-in-brazil-s-fertile-cowboy-country-1187813.html) (The Independent)
Quote"America doesn't have anywhere to go now," Mr Moon said in a speech in New York earlier this year. "The country that represents Satan's harvest is America, the kingdom of extreme individuality, of free sex."
So now you might find him in Jardim - where he is constructing a mini- country, with dozens of theme cities - or in nearby Uruguay or Argentina, rather than his pounds 6m New York mansion or his farm in Texas.
Mr Moon has an impressive list of friends - Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Augusto Pinochet. Not bad for a man who insists Jesus Christ was the product of an adulterous affair. But then Mr Moon is convinced he is the new Messiah, the Chosen One. ...
Mr Moon is still smarting from a string of failed projects, including ambitious land purchases in Africa and a car-manufacturing project in China. In recent years his followers have been kicked out of several strongly Catholic Central American nations, including Guatemala and El Salvador, for "bad manners", a euphemism for proselytising in the streets while on tourist visas.
Venezuela recently barred his followers from any religious activities for the same reason. In Uruguay, where he also owns the newspaper Ultimas Noticias and the five-star Victoria Plaza hotel, his bank, Banco de Credito, was recently put under the control of the Central Bank after management and liquidity problems. ...
A local Catholic priest, Bruno Brugnolaro, is not so welcoming. In a country where the traditional Catholicism is increasingly being undercut by evangelical churches from the US or elsewhere, he is clearly concerned as to Mr Moon's motives. "How can he talk about family when he has been married several times?" he told the Florida newspaper.
Aug. 15, 1999: Moonies Make 'Heaven on Earth' (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/420935.stm) (BBC)
QuoteThe group has already spent more than $20m on a 74,000 acre site, called New Hope Ranch. Two thousand followers are already living on the site, and they plan to invest $2bn over the next 10 years. The Moonies are intending to invite local children to attend their school by offering them free transport, although they insist there will be no indoctrination in classrooms
Feb. 3, 2000: Moonies Aim to Score With Brazilians (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/629251.stm) (BBC)
Feb. 28, 2002: Brazil Probes Moonie Land Purchases (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1847934.stm) (BBC)
QuoteMembers of the church running the project have said the idea is to create a model of development which would become the envy of the world, with new towns dedicated to different types of agriculture and industry.
But the authorities are worried that the holdings of the 82-year-old Korean multimillionaire, whose followers believe he is the latter-day Messiah, may be a threat to national security....
The church initially did all it could to get local support, holding regular barbecues for locals and giving out ambulances and other gifts. But now the project is raising suspicion and the local state legislature has set up a commission to investigate Reverend Moon's activities
April 14, 2006: Over The Moon: How Football Wins Recruits For Sect Leader in Brazil (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/apr/14/brazil.mainsection) (The Guardian)
QuoteUnification Church's critics say sports projects are used to brainwash impoverished young people. ...
Outside the club, Moon's powers of persuasion have also come to the fore at regular meetings with local authorities and businessmen in the five-star hotels of Campo Grande. The tactic seems to have paid off - the parliamentary inquiry, installed in 2002 to look into Moon's activities on his vast ranch in Jardim, shied away from showing him the red card, concluding that his extravagant projects should be seen as "an excellent opportunity to establish a bridge with the first world and not as the installation of the Kingdom of Evil on Earth". ...
It has to be said that Moon's own family life has not been perfect. Now estimated to be a billionaire, he has been married at least twice, fathered 13 or 14 children, been convicted of tax evasion in the US and is banned from the EU. Several of his offspring have had marital problems and at least one has had drug addiction problems.
When it launched in Britain and other countries in the 1970s and 1980s, the church was heavily criticised for its brainwashing conversion techniques - so-called "heavenly deception" - and the pressures it placed on followers. It claims to have long since abandoned these methods. It has also drawn criticism for the fortune it seems to have accumulated; it owns a string of companies, is involved in the manufacture of military equipment ...
Jan. 20, 2020: UC South American Representative, Prosecuted for Money Laundering & Drug Smuggling in the US Court, Suspicious of Connection to the Church Leadership (http://www.wikileaks-kr.org/news/articleView.html?idxno=75453) (WikiLeaks)
QuoteThe rumour that Tarrago was associated with narcotics organizations was well known in Paraguay. Tarrago even visited Jarvis Chimenes Pavao, the "drug kingpin" of South America, jailed in a Paraguay prison when she was active as an MP in 2015, which became a local media sensation. It was about this time that Tarrago began full-fledged activities in the Unification Church after joining the Unification Church's organizations, Women's Federation for World Peace (WFWP) and Universal Peace Federation (UPF).
Tarago, however, got promoted very fast in the Church organization, unlike ordinary worshippers. At first, she began with an invited guest as an MP and gradually expanded the radius of her activities. Later, she went up to the stage of preparing and organizing international events not only in Paraguay but also in the entire South America.
Tarrago played a leading role in connecting top Paraguayan politicians with senior members of the Unification Church when they visited Paraguay in October 2016. At that time, the Unification Church established the IAPP as a subordinate organization in Paraguay. Tarrago then was appointed as the President of IAPP in Paraguay on April 25, 2017. In the same year, she founded IAPP's South American headquarters on December 5 at the Asuncion World Trade Center in Paraguay, for which she also served as a chair for the South American region.
After all, Tarrago rose to a top position of the Unification Church for the continent, not a single country, at the age of late 30s, ahead of many former presidents and congressmen, only three years after her full-fledged activities at the Unification Church. People say that it is also unusual to set up the Unification Church's South American headquarters in Paraguay, not Brazil or Argentina.
Since then, there has been "a serious suspicion within the Unification Church that a huge amount of drug money in South America was linked to the leadership of the Church, with Tarrago as a surrogate". The Unification Church officials say, "It is impossible for Tarago with an ordinary background in the Church to take a position of the South America representative in just three years without the power of a huge amount of money". Moreover, the issue of appointing a continental representative of the Unification Church is known as "impossible without the approval of the leadership of the Church in Korea, where the President Hak Ja Han resides".
Boldly Tarrgo carried out her drug-related business when she visited various international events of the Unification Church. Tarrago met with the undercover agents disguised as drug traffickers at a UPF event at the New Yorker Hotel, owned by the Unification Church, in November 2018 to plot money laundering and propose drug trafficking. The details was revealed in the FBI's criminal complaint.
Tarrago also visited South Korea in August 2019. She attended the International Leaders Conference hosted by the Unification Church at Lotte Hotel World in Jamsil (https://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Talks/Selig/Selig-190818.pdf) from August 15 to 17. On the 19th, she also visited Cheonjeong Palace of the Unification Church in Cheongpyeong, Gyeonggi-do where President Hak Ja Han resides, and posted photos on the Instagram.
Feb. 10, 2023: Cocaine Cartels Encroach on UC's Paraguayan Paradise (https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/paraguay-drugs-unification-church/) (Reuters)
Quote...Reuters found no evidence the Unification Church or its members were involved in the drug-running targeted by the raids, or that it controls airstrips in the Chaco, an area authorities in Paraguay describe as lawless. Michelle Byun, the lawyer for The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification Of World Christianity, as the church's Paraguayan branch is formally known, said in a statement that the church is aware of illegal activity on its land and is cooperating with law enforcement."Both the Church, with its headquarters in Korea, and its members advocate for peace," Byun said. "In no way is the Church involved in illegal acts." ...
One prominent Paraguayan with close ties to the church has been convicted of a drug-related crime: Cynthia Tarrago, a member of Paraguay's Congress between 2013 and 2018 and the regional president of a church offshoot organization. In Paraguay, where the Chaco acquisition has long been contentious, the church has cultivated close ties with presidents, politicians and supreme court justices. Some have been granted senior positions in the church or its many offshoot organizations.
Tarrago was one of them. In 2017, she was named president of the South American chapter of the International Association of Parliamentarians for Peace (IAPP). Byun, the church lawyer, was named secretary general. Launched in 2016, the IAPP recruits legislators from around the world who are committed to advancing church goals. In 2020, Tarrago and her husband, Raimundo Va, pleaded guilty to money laundering charges after being caught up in a sting operation by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. FBI agents impersonating drug traffickers provided the money that Tarrago laundered. ...
Tarrago had begun appearing at important church events in Paraguay by 2016. The following year, she spoke at a global summit in Seoul, according to church promotional materials. In November 2018, she flew into New York City with her husband, Va, for another such event at the Unification Church-owned New Yorker hotel. During their stay, the couple met an undercover FBI agent, who asked them to launder drug money. They said they were game. ...
The alleged drug-running on its land isn't the only trouble the Unification Church has faced in the Chaco. ...
In 2000, after snapping up assets in Uruguay and Brazil, Moon purchased the Chaco terrain from Carlos Casado SA, an agricultural giant named after its founder, a 19th-century Spanish-Argentine magnate. The acquisition handed the church full control of Puerto Casado, a small company town built to house Carlos Casado employees who for decades had toiled in semi-feudal conditions processing tannin from the Chaco's native quebracho trees.
Overnight, everything in Puerto Casado – its houses, roads and cemetery – all belonged to Moon and his church. Anger quickly mounted as the town's 6,000-odd inhabitants realized the homes they had lived in their entire lives, but never owned, now belonged to a self-proclaimed messiah from Korea.
When church executives flew in to close the deal, locals formed a human chain to block their plane from leaving, forcing them to sleep the night in the aircraft. Early church gestures to assuage tensions, such as an offer to hand back control of the cemetery to the town's inhabitants, only caused greater outrage.
Its administrators also stoked resentment. Locals recalled one church official, Lorenzo Myung, who would walk around town armed with a shotgun. His son, known as Lorenzito, "was even worse ... because he was more aggressive," menacing locals if they looked him in the eyes, said Martin Rodriguez, an 87-year-old Spanish priest who first arrived in Puerto Casado as a Salesian missionary in 1980.
Rodriguez and other locals accused the Myungs of involvement in a 2005 blaze that burned down the local radio station, housed in the town's Catholic church, which served as the main mouthpiece of opposition to the Korean ownership.
Dora Irrazábal, a prosecutor who led the probe into the blaze, said the townspeople and church management were "at war" when she arrived in Puerto Casado. She said Lorenzo Myung, whom she recalled as an "aggressive" man, accused locals of stealing church property but provided no evidence. Locals, meanwhile, accused Irrazábal of being a church stooge after she flew in on a church plane. "It was a tense moment," she said. Irrazábal said investigators found signs of arson but did not have sufficient evidence to charge anyone. The case remains unsolved. ...
March 25, 2022: Cynthia Tarragó is Sentenced to Two Years & nine Months in Prison (C9N Paraguay)
March 25, 2022: Paraguayan Ex-Official Sentenced in NJ for Money Laundering Scheme (https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/paraguay-ex-official-diaz-sentenced-money-laundering-scheme/3187614/) (NBC Philadelphia)
A conversation with Ronald Avila-Claudio from BBC Mundo fresh from his visit to Puerto Casado:
August 2, 2025: Why a South Korean Church Bought a Village in Paraguay (https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/p0lt9lkf) (BBC's Fifth Floor - 18 Minutes)
Note to Self: I should grab a transcript of that.