Trust sues to avert sale of polygamists’ land

VANCOUVER, B.C. – A Utah-controlled trust has asked the courts for legal intervention to prevent members of a Bountiful, B.C., polygamist community from cashing out its assets and moving.

“We’ve just heard rumors that they may be going to another province,” said Zachary Shields, a lawyer representing Bruce Wisan, the court-appointed accountant running the church trust in Utah. “I’ve heard Manitoba and Saskatchewan mentioned.”

The Bountiful group has ties to the Hildale, Utah-based Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a polygamist church whose United Effort Plan trust holds property in Utah, Arizona and Canada. The group’s leader, Warren Jeffs, is wanted on criminal charges in Utah and Arizona for allegedly arranging marriages between underage girls and older men. He has not been seen by authorities in nearly two years and is being sought by the FBI.

Last year, a Utah judge put the trust in the hands of an independent accountant after Jeffs followers began liquidating assets and establishing communities in other states.

The British Columbia lawsuit seeks to prevent the same thing from being attempted there. The focus of the lawsuit is the Bountiful Elementary-Secondary School Society, which owns six parcels of property including two schools, a meeting house, timberland and some homes.

Worth an estimated $3 million, the society’s assets were once part of the United Effort Plan trust. The lawsuit contends the trust remains a beneficiary of the school society and, if sold or dissolved in some way, the society’s assets should be transferred to the trust, Shields said.

“Our concern is the land may be sold and the money taken.”

In Utah, “we get stories that people get called up in the middle of the night, (are told) ‘You’re to come to Texas,’ and they consider that an honor and privilege,” Shields said.

That could happen in Canada, he said.

About 400 of the 1,000 people who live in the Canadian community not far from the Idaho border are followers of Jeffs.

The remainder follow Winston Blackmore, a former FLDS leader who formed his own sect three years ago.

Blackmore’s followers also practice polygamy.