How Winners Church Officials Swindled Bishop Oyedepo

MICHAEL AKINOLA

Facts have emerged on how some highly placed officials of the Living Faith Church Worldwide, a.k.a. Winners Chapel, allegedly conspired and swindled the presiding Bishop of the Church, Dr. David Oyedepo, of millions of Naira from the church’s account.

P.M.EXPRESS gathered that the officials, mostly the accountants in charge of money realised during Church service and other Church fleet of businesses, manufactured double figures and other dubious means to swindle the Church.
The actual amount involved was not disclosed but sources close to the Church said it was in hundreds of millions of Naira and it was perpetrated over a period of time before the Church discovered the alleged fraud. The identities of the top officials involved in the alleged fraud were not disclosed but they have been dismissed from the Church.
This came to open when Bishop Oyedepo spoke with rage at the Empowerment Summit organised for ordained workers of the Church last Saturday.
The annual event, which is usually attended by Pastors, Zonal Ministers and their assistants, deacons, ushers and other ordained workers of the church, where they are acquainted with the church’s programme for the year, was presided over by Oyedepo, while his deputy, Bishop David Abioye, was also in attendance. Both men ministered powerfully. Oyedepo ministered on service, while Abioye spoke on consistency in service.
Towards the end of the programme, however, Oyedepo took some time to talk about the goings on in the church. He revealed how some very high up officials, mainly accountants, had looted the church’s treasury.
The Bishop could not hide his disappointment that professionals trusted by the church to prevent fraud turned themselves into a network of fraudsters.
Expressing his disappointment in the errant church officials, who have since been relieved of their positions in the church, he said: “Can you imagine accountants perpetrating fraud in the house of God?”
“We had no choice but to dismiss them. You can imagine top church officials engaging in doubling figures and other dubious practices.”
“Even after we dismissed them, we discovered more fraud. Those who should discover the fraud were the ones involved in it. One of them refused to confess until the last minute.”
He admonished the Church members against employing the dismissed officials. He said he had to tell everyone present because he knew the dismissed officials will come to them for employment.
“Don’t employ them and don’t sympathise with them. Whoever sympathises with the wicked is wicked himself.”
Dead silence fell on the gathering as the Bishop reiterated, “Don’t sympathise with any perpetrator of fraud, otherwise you are a partaker of the evil act”.