Fox News National Correspondent, Phil Keating, explores the car elevator at the Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles, Florida. One of the luxury condos of the building belonging to the Brazilian evangelical billionaire Edir Macedo is for sale.
The richest religious broadcaster in the world seeks to unload its luxury condo in Florida.
The seaside residence of the Brazilian billionaire billionaire Edir Macedo in the Porsche ultra-exclusive Miami design tower is now listed for just under $ 14.6 million after a price drop, according to public real estate registers.
Macedo, founder and bishop of Iigreja Universal Do Reino Deus (Universal Church of the Kingdom of God), is not foreign to a sumptuous life or to a controversy.
Its net value is estimated at $ 1.8 billion, which classifies it 1,901st on the billionaire in real time of Forbes. In comparison, Kim Kardashian’s net value is $ 1.7 billion.
Palm Beach, the Southern Wall Street, has a hot luxury real estate market
The Porsche Design Tower, an architectural Marvel of $ 560 million completed in 2017, is famous for its car elevators which transport luxury vehicles directly in private condo garages. In 2013, the real agreement reported that “nearly two dozen houses – 22 – under the contract will belong to billionaires”.
The tower has a compulsory owners’ association with monthly costs ranging from $ 4,277 to $ 12,069.
Over the years, the neighbors of Macedo have included international celebrities like Lionel Messi, the Colombian pop star Maluma, the Mexican actress Thalía and Andrea Romanello Ferdinand, daughter of Patrick Romanello, who the New York Times reported “was a partner of the Bonanno crime family”.
The Horizon Sunny Isles Beach Florida line and the Porsche Design Tower are represented in Miami, Florida, July 11, 2023. (Giorgio Viera / AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)
But the Florida condo may not be the only real estate family Macedo holds in the United States
According to a property intelligence database examined by the surveillance group The Trinity Foundation, another condo Sunny Isles Beach worth $ 9.6 million is linked to the family. However, according to research by the Trinity Foundation, the Miami-Dade County real estate assessor lists only a shell LLC as a publicly attached name.
The Trinity Foundation, a non -profit organization that is investigating religious fraud, has long followed Macedo’s financial activities.
“The Macedo Empire includes media companies, banking interests and international real estate,” noted the group, citing its control of the Record television network in Brazil and Banco Renner.
The universal church is not only active in Brazil. It works around the world, including in Portugal, Mexico and the United States. The church even built a modern version of the Temple of Solomon in São Paulo, Brazil.
The billionaire Edir Macedo is projected on a screen displayed outside a replica of the Temple of Solomon during an inauguration ceremony in Sao Paulo, Brazil, July 31, 2014. (Paulo Fridman / Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Despite its richness and its clear power, the “Contact us” page of the church on its American website claims that “the Universal Church does not provide financial assistance programs”.
Their live delivery 24/7 available on the website of the Universal Church currently offers “blessed water” for sale, which claims to cure everything, from depression to cancer.
According to the Trinity Foundation, the organization also has four private jets and a helicopter, the active workers rarely seen in the non -profit religious world.
The Macedo Empire had legal problems. In 2008, he and nine of his associates were accused in Brazil of having turned around $ 2 billion.
The developer Gil Dezer is held in the elevator of cars in the Porsche Design Tower on Sunny Isles Beach, Florida, May 9, 2017. (Rhona Wise / AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)
As reported by the Associated Press, “the church would have used false companies to whiten money, move assets abroad, then make them in the form of loans used by Macedo and its accomplices to buy businesses, prosecutors said.”
Brazilian courts did not condemn Macedo or his co-accused.
Other problems appeared in 2019, when the authorities of Angola charged four leaders of the Macedo church with financial crimes, including money laundering.
According to Ver Angola, the benefits led to the expulsion of 22 members of the Brazilian church by officials of Angolan immigration.
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The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God did not immediately respond to the request for comments from Fox Business.
