Another story related to the sect’s activities took place in St. Petersburg. There, the CEO of a construction company was convicted. She collected more than 100 million rubles from investors and donated this money to Scientologists. Vladimir Sedov will tell about how they make people poor with a smile on their face.
Our program got an exclusive video that was made at the Russian Scientologists’ headquarters. This is what a communicative abilities development class looks like. The student is practicing her skill of winning around an interlocutor.
Pay attention to this girl, the commissioner for ethics. She carefully controls that the listeners aren’t distracted from learning. According to experts, such training helps a Scientologist turn a blind eye to the suffering of potential victims.
Yelena Zhuravleva, a victim: "All the money was given to the church, well, some part of it went to the construction of the Scientology Church, that’s all I know".
Yelena Zhuravleva and several hundred other people were deceived by a Scientology follower, Yekaterina Zaborskikh. It looks like she was a good student. She declared herself the CEO of the Olimp construction company and convincingly invited everyone to join the equity construction of residential complexes in St. Petersburg.
Here are some photos of luxury low-rise buildings. Their grace and affordable price attracted the investors. But it never went beyond the construction fence. Having earned people’s trust, Zaborskikh collected millions of rubles and transferred them to her Scientology teachers.
This building on Taganskaya Street is the headquarters of Scientology in Russia. The sign has recently been changed, and now it’s supposedly not a church, but the Center of Scientology, but it doesn’t change the meaning. Here, fanatical devotees are still trained, and their task is to earn money for the church by any means.
It’s to the accounts of this organization that the Olimp construction company’s CEO, Yekaterina Zaborskikh, transferred more than 130 million rubles stolen from investors.
The Scientology Church is one of the oldest sectarian organizations. It was founded in 1954 by science fiction writer, Ron Hubbard. It consists of more than 11 thousand representative offices in 184 countries. Its profit is several million dollars a day. By the scale of activity, it can be compared with the largest transnational corporations.
The organization promises to find a way to happiness, but in fact, sectarians are only interested in money and power. They lure people with big wallets and ambitions to attend training and seminars and then take away their businesses.
The Scientologists’ activities can be compared to the intelligence service’s methods. For each recruited person, they collect a dossier in order to fully control all areas of their life. Dissenters receive the title of a "suppressive person" and are persecuted. Devotees, such as Yekaterina Zaborskikh, are convinced that the power and wealth of the church are the main things, and the broken destinies of ordinary people don’t matter.
Alexander Korelov, defrauded investors’ lawyer: "I wish you’d heard what people were saying at the court. People who, as a result of her activities, got strokes and cancer, lost families. And I'm not even talking about those who lost apartments and money. Many are now wandering around, being homeless".
In 2016, large-scale searches were held in the Moscow Center of Scientology. Investigators found a huge number of books by Ron Hubbard. Most of them were recognized by the experts as dangerous for the human psyche. And later, it was established that Scientology has nothing to do with religion. The organization needs this status only not to pay taxes from the so-called donations, that is the money of deceived businessmen.
By the decision of the Supreme Court of Russia, the process of liquidating the Scientology Church in Moscow was launched.
Alexander Dvorkin, Professor of the Orthodox St. Tikhon Humanitarian University: "I met a lot of former members of Scientology. Of course, they are very brainwashed. And most people need serious psychological help. Unfortunately, only a small part of people receive it. I don’t know whether the state will be able to completely shut them down, or, as I hope, to liquidate them completely, to not only liquidate the Scientology Church, as it was done in Moscow, but to recognize all Scientology and all its divisions as an extremist organization. But if it succeeds, I think it’ll be a very big victory".
After Yekaterina Zaborskikh’s detention, the Church of Scientology in St. Petersburg was also searched. Soldiers of special forces caught the sectarians by surprise. They took important documents on the organization’s activities. Later, they became evidence in the Yekaterina Zaborskikh’s criminal case.
According to the court's decision, Yekaterina Zaborskikh will spend the next 6 and a half years in a minimum security prison. The former CEO of the construction company listened to the verdict with an imperturbable look, as she was taught at the Scientology classes.
It’s curious that after the announcement of the verdict, the sectarians rushed to get rid of their adept. She won’t be useful and won’t bring money. Vladimir Sedov, Kirill Kryuchko, Vesti On-Call
