A house divided

An artist's rendering of the temple and community center planned for a wooded parcel in Lowell's Pawtucketville neighborhood by the Community of Khmer Buddhist Monks Inc. Heated disputes among the project's leaders, centered around the possible mishandling of money, have led to the departure of two members of the project's executive committee, one involuntarily, as well as other former volunteers.

HAPPIER DAYS: Sam Meas, second from left, listens as fellow Community of Khmer Buddhist Monks Inc. executive committee member Samkhann Khoeun speaks during a meeting at The Sun in December 2011. With them are committee members Maya Men and Sambath Soum. Meas and Soum, who both left the committee last summer, have raised questions about the handling of the temple's finances. They are not alone. SUN FILE PHOTO / DAVID H. BROW

Former executive committee member Sam Meas says he and others grew more suspicious of the group's finances early last summer when committee member Maya Men, who was unemployed, told those involved with the project she purchased this home at 71 Varnum Ave. in Lowell. Men told The Sun she lives in the home, and that no temple money was involved. 

Local Cambodians dreamed of building their own temple. The project is now mired in accusations and countercharges

02/17/2013

By Lyle Moran, lmoran@lowellsun.comlowellsun.com

Lowell Sun (Massachusetts, USA)

LOWELL -- Bory Kem once regularly attended services at the Trairatanaram Temple in North Chelmsford, but the constant infighting and legal battles between the "upstairs" and "downstairs" factions made it impossible for her to find peace there.

She left more than a dozen years ago.

In the years since, Kem, an activist in the local Cambodian community, has held out hope she would find another place in the area where she and her family could pray and practice Buddhism free of tension.

She returned to Lowell in November 2011 after a year in Cambodia and heard a Buddhist group was planning to build a temple and community center on a wooded parcel in the city's Pawtucketville neighborhood. She was eager to learn more.

She found out the effort was being led by the Community of Khmer Buddhist Monks Inc., who control the "upstairs" portion of the Chelmsford temple. 

Kem, 49, attended a Cambodian New Year's fundraising ceremony last April for the temple, met the project's leaders and assisted as a volunteer.

"I was so excited and wanted to do everything I could for the temple," said Kem.

But her feelings of hope about the effort have since been shaken.

Heated disputes among the project's leaders, centered around the possible mishandling of money, have led to the departure of two members of the project's executive committee, one involuntarily, as well as other former volunteers.

The booted-out board member, former Republican congressional candidate Sam Meas, has filed a complaint with the Attorney General's Office. He is calling for an investigation into the CKBM's finances.

Meanwhile, CKBM officials are steadfast that all money is properly accounted for and has been spent appropriately. The leader of the group has accused those seeking more financial transparency of not having the authority to do so and trying to divide the community.

Now Kem, other supporters and potential donors are wondering who to believe about the group's finances, and whether the project will be a success. 

Search for answers

The seeds of discontent among the eight-member executive committee overseeing the project were sown last spring.

Sam Meas of Haverhill and Sambath Soum of Lowell, two of the four lay people on the board, sought answers about the CKBM's fundraising activities for months last year but could not get any.

Soum and Meas were frustrated because they were assured that CKBM's finances would be audited independently. They never were.

Soum, the executive committee member for operations, quit early last August because the information was not provided.

Meas said he was told that since August 2011, the group had raised more than $300,000 toward its $10 million goal. Meas said he saw a bank statement last summer showing only $6,000 in the bank.

Meas, who ran for office in the then-Fifth Congressional District in 2010, also was troubled that one of the three people he said controlled the temple money was publicly stating that she had purchased a Lowell home despite not having a job.

Meas, as the project's executive committee member in charge of finances and budget, demanded last August to meet with the group's leaders to renew his request for an audit.

The wait for information continued on the agreed-upon date of the gathering.

One of the leaders Meas hoped to meet with because of her control of funds, executive committee member Maya Men, did not show. Meas said Venerable Sao Khon, head monk of the CKBM, met privately with another monk for two hours before emerging.

According to Meas and Soum, Khon appeared and denied the request for an audit. He also accused Meas and others seeking the audit of "trying to start a revolution" in the CKBM community.

Days later, Meas, 40, said he was removed from the temple project board by Khon.

Soum, who had previously resigned, said a letter circulated in the community after the incident saying he was also kicked off the board.

Complaint filed with AG

In October, Meas, with the backing of a dozen or so former volunteers and project supporters, filed a complaint with the state Attorney General's Office. Meas' complaint calls for the office's Public Charities Division to investigate CKBM's accounting practices and compel CKBM to release to the public all revenues and expenses from August 2011 through August 2012.

Meas said the CKBM raised $400,000 to $600,000 during the period he specified, primarily in cash.

"Very little, if any of the monies from the donations, is deposited at the bank," Meas wrote in his complaint. "There is very little procedure and control in place to ensure that donations are recorded and spent as intended. There is very little in the form of any record keeping. There is no accounting ledger."

Meas told The Sun he was troubled that only Men, Khon and executive committee member Nhem Kimteng had control of the group's money and would not let others know about how it was being handled.

"The fact they are not disclosing the financial information with anyone shows there is something wrong and there might be malfeasance," Meas said in an interview. "The community and those who donated the money and volunteered to help deserve to know how much has been raised and how the money has been spent."

Meas also said he was irked by the lack of financial transparency because training sessions for the project always emphasized openness and accountability. Samkhann Khoeun, the executive committee member in charge of training and public relations, led most of the sessions held every two weeks or so.

"I felt like I was lied to and misled, and their intentions were not as pure as presented," Meas said.

Soum, who joined the temple project as a volunteer in late 2011, said those in control of the funds kept promising a public accounting of the donations received, but never delivered.

"What they promised to do they did not do, which was disappointing," said Soum, 45. "I just want the public to know the truth."

Emalie Gainey, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Martha Coakley, said Coakley's office does not confirm or deny the existence of complaints to the office's Public Charities Division.

Religious organizations are exempt from registering and filing documents with the attorney general's Charities Division. The CKBM, a religious group, also is not required to file an annual return with the Internal Revenue Service, according to the nonprofit tracker GuideStar.

Purchase draws questions

Meas said he and others grew more suspicious of the group's finances early last summer when Men, who lacked a job, began telling those involved with the project she had purchased a home in Lowell.

The property, a white, single-family home at 71 Varnum Ave., was purchased last July.

Public records show it was purchased by Men's son, Chantrea Pich, and Men's niece, Rachana S. Chek, for $250,000. Richard Boyle of Tyngsboro, who holds the mortgage on the CKBM's Pawtucketville land, financed the purchase. Chek and Pich took out a $200,000 mortgage from Boyle.

Also raising eyebrows was that the deed for 71 Varnum Ave. listed Soum's address as having rights of survivorship. His permission was never sought.

Men told The Sun she lives in the home, and that no temple money was involved in the purchase.

But Meas said he remains skeptical because the sale was financed by Boyle, a man to whom CKBM is in debt.

"I wonder how she got the money to pay for the house without a job," Meas said.

Others had concerns, too

Denys Meung and Sarith San both say they helped the CKBM put tools in place to track the fundraising and spending, but the group's leaders ignored the measures.

As an example, Meung said a Cambodian New Year's event held last April raised approximately $100,000, but only $30,000 of it was recorded in the database system.

The tools to track the group's monthly budget and spending were also not used, said Meung, who left the project in August.

"The design was not supposed to be fishy, but the practice was fishy," Meung said. "I put my trust in them and felt I like I wasted my trust."

In an email last August to San that The Sun obtained, Khoeun admitted the CKBM still needed to implement its accounts payable and receivable for the project.

San set up and hosted a website for the CKBM, but he said he was only paid $2,000 of the $4,000 the CKBM agreed to pay him. He also said he has donated money and as of early January had not received any receipt or tax-deductible form acknowledging the donations.

"Right now people who donated are frustrated," said San. "We want to know where the money has gone."

CKBM offers defense

Khon, through Khoeun, declined multiple requests for interviews for this story due to unspecified "other important matters." But in email answers he defended the CKBM's handling of funds.

"It is not CKBM's policy to keep any intended funds for anything than what were stated publicly to our CKBM's members and supporters," Khon wrote.

The CKBM declined multiple requests to provide The Sun with documentation verifying how much money has been raised or spent.

As of late December, the CKBM says it had raised $500,000 for the temple, all of which has been deposited in the bank, said Khon. The money came from more than 5,000 supporters who have donated from $1 to $1,000.

The CKBM says it has spent the money it has raised primarily to make mortgage payments on the 12 acres it purchased off Townsend Avenue for $1.25 million from Boyle in December 2011.

The group agreed to make monthly interest payments of $5,000 on the $1.2 million mortgage beginning last January. Principal and interest payments will rise to close to $8,000 in 2013, according to public documents.

If the CKBM pays off the mortgage by 2014, Boyle will reimburse them $175,000, said Khon. He says he believes his group is well on its way to meeting its goal.

The group has also spent money on consultants, attorneys, architects, utilities, food and a variety of other costs. There are no paid staff or paid board members for the project, said Khon.

Fundraising and spending has been tracked through hard-copy and electronic bookkeeping, according to Khon.

"We have our records and bookkeeping in place," Khon wrote. "It has been set up and used for every special event and others accordingly."

Despite multiple sources saying Men controlled the funds along with Khon, the head monk insists only monks control the money.

Men, whom the temple project's website says manages the group's finances and coordinates fundraising, also said only the monks have control of project finances.

Khon also is steadfast in his defense of his decision to reject Meas' and others' calls for an audit.

He says the CKBM's bylaws include no clause calling for an outside audit, so if one was needed, the organization's board of directors would have to vote for one to take place.

Meas was not a member of CKBM's board of directors, but a member of the temple project's executive committee. He "had no rights and privilege of demanding any drastic change to the CKBM's bylaws, organizational structure, and its operation," said Khon.

The head monk, who is in his late 70s, also is critical of the way he says Meas treated him last August when calling for an audit, including Meas' threats to take his concerns to the media.

Khon said Meas' actions toward him were insulting, irresponsible and incomprehensible coming from a "supposed educated, U.S. politician-want-to be."

"Such unethical actions and behavior is unheard of in our Khmer tradition or among the Buddhist community; of course, with an except(sic) of the ultra communist Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s, where the Khmer Rouge cadres killed a quarter of the entire Cambodian population by mass torture, execution, starvation, enslaved labor, imprisonment, and lack of any ... humanity," Khon wrote.

Khoeun, the former executive director of the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association, also did not take kindly to Meas' request for an audit. Following the proposal, Khoeun wrote an August email to Meas that he should go back to doing what he does best, running for political office.

"We will not let any individual (be it the Buddhist monk or anyone else) with their harmful motives and agendas to ruin this community-driven development work that we have been working so very hard thus far, at all," Khoeun wrote. "Do mark my words carefully!"

Khon said after the audit request he consulted with other Buddhist monks on the CKBM board of directors and decided to remove Meas from the executive committee to prevent further negative actions toward the CKBM. He did not acknowledge the letter kicking out Soum.

Temple project continues

Meas and Soum both say they don't want to bring down the project; they just want to make sure donated funds are properly accounted for and spent.

Meanwhile, Khon said the CKBM has not given up hope that the project designed to serve as testimony to the resilience of Cambodians will see its way to fruition.

The effort has drawn opposition from the Pawtucketville Citizens Council because of building and wetlands violations, and recently the state's Department of Environmental Protection denied the project by rejecting prior approvals it received from the city's Conservation Commission.

The CKBM has since hired a law firm that specializes in environmental matters to appeal DEP's denial.

"We hope and pray for a positive ruling within the next several weeks or months," Khon said.

As for Kem, she says she is thinking about whether she wants to support the project anymore.

She had planned this April to give $1,000 to the effort on behalf of herself, her four children and other relatives. But Kem is now having second thoughts.

"I learned my lesson from the Trairatanaram Temple and I'm afraid they will go down that path," Kem said. "I don't want to get hurt again."

Follow Lyle Moran on Twitter @lylemoran.