Church finances: Ensign Peak and the SEC order

For two decades Church senior leadership approved a shell-company structure that hid the size of the investment portfolio; the SEC fined the Church and Ensign Peak $5 million in 2023.

What the Church claims

The Church is led by prophets, seers and revelators who manage the Lord's sacred tithing funds with honesty and transparency befitting that trust.

Once the evidence is in, this claim: Weak. The SEC order is a primary, uncontested record of deliberate long-running concealment approved by the First Presidency. The claim of honest and transparent stewardship escapes total failure only because the order shows no theft and no donor fraud.

The record

On 2023-02-21 the SEC announced settled charges: Ensign Peak Advisors paid a $4 million penalty and the Church $1 million, for failing to file Forms 13F and for misstated filings made through 13 shell LLCs.
The SEC order (Release No. 34-96951) finds that the Church created Ensign Peak in 1997 with about $7 billion, that the 13(f) securities portion grew to about $37.8 billion by 2020, and that Ensign Peak's management knew of the 13F filing requirement 'by at least 1998' and told senior Church leadership.
The order defines 'senior leadership of the Church' as the First Presidency and Presiding Bishopric, and says the Church approved the plan 'to prevent disclosure' because it feared disclosure under Ensign Peak's name 'would lead to negative consequences in light of the size of the Church's portfolio'; Ensign Peak could not adopt the approach without First Presidency approval.
The LLCs' nominal 'Business Managers', many of them Church employees, were chosen because they were not publicly tied to the Church; they were given only signature pages, and the filings misstated who held investment discretion and where the signer was located. Two Church Audit Department reviews (2014, 2017) flagged the risk that the SEC might disagree.
After a public website exposed the structure in May 2018 (about $32 billion in holdings), two Business Managers resigned 'voicing concerns about what they had been asked to do'; the structure continued with replacements until Ensign Peak filed a consolidated 13F on 2020-02-14 showing about $37.8 billion.
David Nielsen, a Senior Portfolio Manager at Ensign Peak from 2010 to 2019, filed a whistleblower complaint in 2019; his declaration in the Huntsman case alleged about $1.4 billion went to City Creek over five years and $600 million to Beneficial Life in 2009.
In April 2003 Gordon B. Hinckley told General Conference that tithing funds 'have not and will not be used' to acquire or develop the downtown mall property, and that funds would come from Church-owned commercial entities and 'earnings of invested reserve funds'.
Court records in Huntsman show Ensign Peak accumulated about $3.9 billion in earnings in 2003 alone, earmarked $1.2 billion for City Creek on 2004-01-01, and appropriated about $1.4 billion to the project between 2007 and 2012. The reserve funds themselves originate in surplus tithing.
Independent estimates (not audited, not confirmed by the Church): the Widow's Mite Report's published estimate puts Church investment reserves near $231 billion and total assets near $320 billion for 2025; the whistleblower's 2019 figure was about $100 billion. These are outside estimates built from 13F filings and return assumptions.
The Church has not published full financial statements in the United States since 1959, though it files accounts where law requires (e.g. UK, Canada, Australia).

The moving target

2003-04: No tithing on the City Creek mall; money comes from commercial entities and earnings on invested reserves.
2019-12-17: The Church takes seriously its duty to care for tithes; most is spent immediately, a portion is 'methodically safeguarded' as a prudent reserve (Parable of the Talents); claims in circulation rest on a 'narrow perspective and limited information'; the Church complies with all applicable law.
2023-02-21: Senior leadership 'received and relied upon legal counsel' in approving the external companies; after the SEC raised concerns in June 2019 the approach changed; 'we affirm our commitment to comply with the law, regret mistakes made, and now consider this matter closed.'
2022-08-11: Year-end 'tithing settlement' renamed 'tithing declaration', to stress that the interview is about declaring tithing status, not settling an account.

The exchange

FAIR, 'Church financial reporting to the SEC'; Church Newsroom

It was a reporting-method problem, not concealment from regulators: every holding was reported to the SEC (just under LLC names), taxes were paid, no investor was harmed, and leaders relied on legal counsel from 2000 onward. Privacy protected the Church from copy-cat trading and, FAIR adds, from security risks.

The answer: The SEC's findings, which the Church agreed not to contest, describe more than a technicality: the stated purpose was 'to prevent disclosure', signers were given bare signature pages, addresses and investment-discretion statements were false, and the structure continued after two internal audits flagged the risk and after two nominee managers resigned over it. 'Relied on counsel' does not appear in the SEC's findings as a mitigating fact, and the 2019-12 First Presidency statement that the Church 'complies with all applicable law' was issued while the structure had only just been abandoned under SEC pressure.

What they get right: True that the securities were reported in aggregate across the LLCs, no member funds were lost, no fraud on donors was charged, and $5 million is a small penalty. The SEC did not allege tax evasion or misuse of funds.

FAIR blog (Sarah Quan, 2020-02-24); First Presidency 2019

A large reserve is prudent, scriptural (seven fat years; Parable of the Talents), funds a growing church in poor countries, and tithing is for temples, meetinghouses and missionary work rather than general charity.

The answer: Prudence explains a reserve; it does not explain secrecy, or a fund that on outside estimates is many decades of operating expense. The issue for the truth claim is candour: members tithe as a temple-recommend condition with no financial disclosure, and the SEC record shows leaders hid the portfolio's size precisely because of how members and the public might react.

What they get right: No law requires US churches to publish accounts, and critics' headline totals are estimates, not audited numbers.

Church counsel; FAIR; Ninth Circuit en banc (2025-01-31)

Hinckley's City Creek statement was literally true: the project was paid from earnings on invested reserves, exactly as he said; the en banc Ninth Circuit agreed unanimously.

The answer: Correct as a matter of law, and skeptics should stop saying a court found tithing fraud. But the distinction is thin for an ordinary donor: the reserves are surplus tithing, so 'earnings on invested tithing' paid for a shopping mall. The court held only that no reasonable juror could find a misrepresentation given the Church's repeated explanation of that distinction.

What they get right: The court's holding is a genuine win for the Church on the facts, not merely on First Amendment grounds.

Both cases at full strength

The skeptics' case

The strongest point is not the size of the fund but the documented conduct of the First Presidency. A federal regulator found, and the Church accepted without admitting or denying, that for roughly twenty years the men sustained as prophets, seers and revelators approved a structure of thirteen shell companies with nominee managers and false filing details, for the stated purpose of keeping members and the public from learning how large the portfolio was. Two internal audits flagged the risk; two nominee managers quit in discomfort; the practice ended only after exposure and an SEC inquiry. The Church's own later statement concedes 'mistakes'. That bears directly on the prophetic-authority claim in two ways. First, it is a multi-decade, unanimous First Presidency decision that the Church now calls a mistake, which sits poorly with 'the Lord will never permit' the president to lead members astray. Second, the motive identified by the SEC was managing members' perceptions, the same motive critics allege in the handling of Church history. Critics overreach when they say the Church 'committed tithing fraud' or 'was convicted': Huntsman lost 11-0, the SEC charged a disclosure violation rather than theft, and the $100B-$300B totals are outside estimates.

The apologetic case

A church with 17 million members and obligations in dozens of poor countries saved aggressively, invested well and wanted privacy; its lawyers designed a filing structure that reported every share to the SEC under LLC names; when the SEC objected in 2019 the Church changed course, paid a modest penalty and said it regretted the mistake. No donor money was lost, no leader was enriched, and an eleven-judge federal court unanimously found that Hinckley told the truth about City Creek. Prophets have never claimed to be infallible securities-law experts.

What would change this

Audited financial disclosure showing the reserve is far smaller or is being drawn down for stated purposes; SEC or documentary evidence that the First Presidency was not told the purpose of the LLC structure.

Sources

An independent project. Not affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or with any organization cited here. Summaries are written here; short quotations are attributed and linked. Every page names its sources so that it can be corrected, and every page can be challenged.