When state-funded anti-cult groups think they are above the law

Section:
The Court of Auditors in Paris

France's state grants funded with taxpayers’ money said to be misused by anti-cult groups stigmatizing and inciting hostility against some religious or belief groups and their members

HRWF — In the framework of its 2023 Call for Projects, MIVILUDES (Interministerial Mission of Vigilance and Combat against Cultic Deviances) generously allocated a state subsidy of 150,000 EUR to CAFFES (Family Support Center Facing Cultic Control). This represents a considerable, if not completely disproportionate, grant for a small association with 90% of its annual budget funded with public money.

If the size of the allocated amount does not constitute an irregularity in itself, the appropriateness of such state generosity raises serious questions and suspicions as every year state funding keeps artificially alive an association that would close its doors without it.

It was recently discovered that CAFFES had failed to publish its financial reports in the Official Gazette for the years 2021 and 2022 and suddenly, but only partly, abode by the law in a hurry on… 18 April 2024 while it should have been done every year within three months after the legal approval of the financial report. Although it is mentioned at the bottom of the document that the report was certified by a statutory auditor, the report itself of the said statutory auditor should also be published to fully comply by the law (Decree Nr 2010-31 of 11 January 2010) but it was not.

Without the grant of the Ministry of the Interior, which represented almost 50% of CAFFES annual budget in 2021 and 2023, the association could hardly survive.

State-sponsored stigmatization and incitement to hostility

The public money allocated to CAFFES and other similar non-state actors is in fact meant by a number of public and state institutions, including ministries, to be used for the fight against some religious or belief communities duly registered and legally monitored. Indeed, they hereby condone and finance stigmatization and incitement to hostility against specific segments of civil society but is it their role to fracture society and create internal tensions?

Is it the role of state institutions to fight against religious communities whose beliefs and practices were not sanctioned by a court, to subcontract that fight to associations hostile to such faith communities and to hereby instrumentalize them so that borderline actions beyond their already questionable mandate can be attempted by others? This is however the reality on the ground.

A decision of the Cassation Court in 2002 against the former head of the anti-cult group ADFI who named Jehovah’s Witnesses “a criminal association” is enlightening. That activist hostile to Jehovah’s Witnesses was also known by the judiciary as another decision of the Court of Cassation in 1999 shows and is now the driving force of CAFFES.

On 27 June 2024, CAFFES launched a call for testimonies targeting the community of Jehovah’s Witnesses in France. The purpose is obviously to stigmatize that religious community. Defamation and hate speech are however never far from violations of the rule of law.

In 2003, CAFFES was sentenced by the Appeal Court of Paris for defaming Jehovah’s Witnesses and many other anti-cult associations in France and other European countries have lost court cases on the same ground in the last 20 years.

Despite the profile of such non-state actors openly expressing their hostility in public, state institutions finance their activities, breaking themselves the laws of the French Republic.

Moreover, in June 2024, the Paris Administrative Court found the state institution MIVILUDES guilty of defamation and sentenced it to delete “incorrect statements” claiming that Jehovah’s Witnesses do not report cases of child sexual abuse to secular authorities and that discourage children from pursuing school education, other fake news reproduced by the media and not only in France.

And in 2023, MIVILUDES had to republish its yearly report, including a four-page right of answer by the Church of Scientology, to avoid a lawsuit.

Anti-cult organizations scrutinized by the Court of Auditors and the UNADFI case

Noteworthy is that, thanks to the vigilance of associations defending religious freedom for all, the anti-cult organizations funded by the state are now increasingly scrutinized by the Court of Auditors (Cour des Comptes), whose mandate is to check whether public funds have been properly used.

Image
Cour des comptes, Paris

The Court of Auditors in Paris
(Credits: TouN — Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0)


In its report of March 2024, the Court strongly denounced the omissions and lies of associations requesting funding from MIVILUDES, in particular following the 2021 call for projects.

A few years ago, the allocation of public subsidies linked to the MIVILUDES 2021 call for projects was scrutinized by CAP/ Liberté de Conscience (CAP/ Freedom of Conscience), a secular European NGO with UN Consultative Status (ECOSOC). It then detected a number of irregularities concerning the anti-cult organization UNADFI (Union Nationale des Associations de Défense des Familles et de l’Individu victimes de sectes) and reported them to the Court of Auditors on 23 September 2021.

The CAFFES case was also investigated by CAP/ Liberté de Conscience and the information material that follows comes from their report on their website.

Diversion of the objective of a MIVILUDES call for projects in the CAFFES case

In the CAFFES case, CAP/ Liberté de Conscience asked and received from the Prefect of the Département du Nord, the documents related to the allocation of a subsidy of 150,000 EUR by MIVILUDES in 2024 (MIVILUDES Call for Projects 2023) to the Lille-based anti-cult association CAFFES.

CAP/ Liberté de Conscience scrutinized them and identified irregularities which it considered to be particularly serious before reporting on 6 August 2024 to the Prefect, as well as to the Court of Auditors and the National Financial Prosecutor's Office.

On this issue, the President of the Court, Pierre Moscovici declared "this is a serious matter." He also indicated that the Prosecutor General of the Court of Auditors had referred the matter to the Litigation Chamber, which would investigate the case "and possibly judge and sentence who it may concern.”

It is important to understand that the MIVILUDES Call for Projects 2023, as its name indicates, obviously concerns future projects... It is therefore intended to finance projects to be implemented during an upcoming given period, and in no way existing or past activities of an association. However, according to CAP/ Liberté de Conscience, this is what CAFFES has done with the grant of 150,000 EUR.

Projects already completed... or already funded!

A first announced project by CAFFES was the production of a comic book called “Operation Thomas” but this project was already completed in 2022, thanks to a previous grant from the same source, MIVILUDES! It was already distributed online on the CAFFES website in March 2023, months before the grant request.

A second CAFFES project is named BOOMERING which CAFFES is in no way piloting but in which it is only a partner, unlike what it said in its application. Moreover, CAFFES website itself mentioned that the project was already complete in the first half of 2023 with some funding of the European Union. Under these conditions, the funding request for the “BOOMERING” project was misleading, according to CAP/ Liberté de Conscience, as the grant of 150,000 euros could therefore not be used for this purpose.

Finally, CAFFES referred to a “prevention film” and a “short film”, which in fact consists of short video segments featuring a member of CAFFES. These videos were shot on a cell phone in a fixed shot and then uploaded to YouTube. These amateur videos did not require any professional skills or equipment. To date, these videos have had between 14 and 46 views – including those of CAP/ Liberté de conscience – with the exception of one successful video which has a mere 108 views.

The official CAFFES YouTube account had only four subscribers and 300 views from 1 March 31 December 2024. This means that even CAFFES members don't even watch these highly confidential videos. Once again, a part of the 150,000 EUR subsidy could not be allocated to the production of these videos.

To recap: From the three projects that were supposed to justify the 150,000 EUR grant, two had already been fully financed from other sources at the time of the application, and one consisted of a few amateur videos shot free of charge on a smartphone in an office and posted on YouTube.

Opinion of CAP/ Liberté de Conscience about the responsibility of MIVILUDES in the CAFFES case

In brief, a micro-association in Lille which wanted to obtain a whopping 150,000 EUR in funding from MIVILUDES, applied for projects which no longer exist or which have already been funded by other calls for projects and ultimately received hundreds of thousands of EUR from MIVILUDES and other state institutions all together. That is thanks to such maneuvers that CAFFES could pay its staff handsomely and continue to exist on the backs of the taxpayers, according to CAP/ Liberté de conscience.

And what does MIVILUDES do, despite having been alerted some years ago about irregularities in the way it allocates subsidies?

It gives, it distributes, it squanders, it finances these associations under perfusion to fight against the vertigo of emptiness.

If MIVILUDES were to stop supporting these associations, they would rapidly disappear, as they clearly lack any credibility to mobilize the public and attract donations.

In other words, on the day MIVILUDES becomes more rigorous and vigilant in abiding by the rule of law, the small and closed club of associations under financial perfusion that benefit from MIVILUDES' largesse will collapse and die a natural death.

But the circle of beneficiary associations – guardians of the safe – are making sure that such an eventuality does not materialize, even if it means ignoring the clear messages of the Court of Auditors.”

How difficult was it to see the questionable use of state funds by the CAFFES? Just a few hours of research to establish and document what was going on, according to CAP/ Liberté de conscience, adding that this is the work that should have been carried out by MIVILUDES from the outset but there was obviously no will to do it.

Source: HRWF