Archangelsk, February 7, 2012
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| Raila Fofanova with members of "Sea Org", the elite militant, ideological, and secret agency at the center of Scientology. |
The company, TELMA, is the family business of Raila Fofanova and her husband. It uses WISE’s methods, and installs electrical wiring and communications, security, and automation systems. TELMA, a company belonging to Scientologists, installed the electrical network, lighting, and power equipment in the Archangelsk Center of the Russian FSB. The work was commissioned by TD Telecom.
In the opinion of many experts, Scientology carries out functions of international special services and in all probability sends some of the information it gathers to the CIA. Therefore, the fact that upper level Scientologists have installed electrical equipment in a regional Russian Security Service communications office raises serious questions in the area of Russian national security, especially regarding sensitive Archangelsk province. Among the sites where the Scientologist-owned company did their work are the administrative building of the mayor of Naryan-Mar, the department of the Federal Treasury in Mirny—a satellite city of the “Plesetsk” cosmodrome, the administrative buildings of the Federal bailiff services in six different cities, the Northern State Medical University, two hospitals, seven schools and lyceums, and four nursery schools.
Partly to blame for this situation is a federal law concerning equipment and installation work in state and municipal buildings, which requires that services be received only through the open market. The competitor with the lowest price automatically wins the contract, and the state or municipal organizations are then obligated to use that company. As a result, the contractor can be a company with suspicious ties to foreign organizations. The co-owner of TELMA, Raila Fofanova, is also director of the “educational center” Praxis-Career, which filed suit against the Archangelsk diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church in October 2011 for re-publishing an exposé of Praxis-Career’s direct affiliation with Scientology entitled, “Praxis-Career in service of Scientology. How Archangelsk businesses are being drawn into a totalitarian sect.” The plaintiff demanded retraction of the article, publication of a disclaimer, and 500,000 rubles (nearly 17,000 USD) in damages. However, Praxis-Center recently withdrew their filing before it went to court, thus showing that Raila Fofanova no is longer trying to deny her center’s connection with the Scientology sect.
Major expert on destructive cults and sects Prof. Alexander Dvorkin has commented on Scientology’s activities during visits to Archangelsk diocese. “If I were to say in a few words what Scientology is, according to the opinion of many experts, it is an international secret service,” stressed Prof. Dvorkin. “In 1993 it signed an agreement with the IRS (US tax bureau), to which a secret protocol was attached. It can be presumed with a great degree of assurance that part of the information gathered by Scientologists are handed over to the CIA. This is already being openly talked about in practically all the European countries.”
Scientology waged a twenty-four-year “war” with the IRS to recapture its revoked non-profit status, and the two suddenly came to agreement in October, 1993 whereby Scientology was granted tax-exemption letters. An article by the New York Times republished in “Scientology verus the IRS” spoke of the aftermath of the Scientology-IRS agreement: “As part of the settlement, Miscavige said, the IRS had agreed to distribute a fact sheet describing Scientology and Hubbard. ‘It is very complete and very accurate,’ Miscavige said. ‘Now, how do I know? We wrote it! And the IRS will be sending it out to every government in the world.’ <…> The church immediately began citing the IRS decision in its efforts to win acceptance from other governments and to silence critics. But the biggest public relations benefit may have come from the U.S. government itself.”
The decision shocked tax specialist throughout the U.S. The IRS has repeatedly refused to make the entire agreement public, a contradiction of its conduct towards other tax-exempt religious organizations, although parts of the agreement have since been leaked.
“Four months after the exemptions were granted, the State Department released its influential human rights report for 1993, a litany of the countries that abuse their citizens. For the first time, the report contained a paragraph noting that Scientologists had complained of harassment and discrimination in Germany. The matter was mentioned briefly in the 1994 and 1995 reports, too”, the New York Times reported in 1997.
