The Rev. Henry J. Lyons, 55, president of the nation's largest predominately black religious denomination, was arrested in St. Petersburg, Fla., Wednesday and charged by state authorities with racketeering and theft, stemming from charges that he allegedly misused his position for personal gain.
According to a copy of the complaint against him, Lyons tried to defraud several corporations and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, which donated more than $225,000 to the denomination to rebuild churches destroyed in a rash of suspicious fires at black churches across the South in 1995 and 1996.One of the charges against Lyons accuses him of trying to illegally obtain more than $100,000 given by the Anti-Defamation League to help rebuild the churches.
Within hours of Lyons' arrest, one of his associates, Bernice V. Edwards, with whom he co-owned a $700,000 waterfront house near St. Petersburg, was arrested at her home in Milwaukee on a warrant issued in Pinellas County, Fla., Milwaukee police said. She was charged with racketeering.
Lyons, elected to lead the National Baptist Convention U.S.A. in 1994, was released on $100,000 bail, law-enforcement officials in Florida said.
The police in Milwaukee said Edwards was jailed in lieu of $50,000 bail. They also said that the Pinellas County Sheriff's Department would move to have her extradited to Florida.
The complaint filed against Lyons and Edwards charges them with conspiring to defraud a bank, an insurance company and other businesses.
The document includes an affidavit by David Kurash, an investigator with the Florida State Attorney's Office, who said that shortly after being elected president of the National Baptist Convention in 1994, Lyons opened a secret convention bank account and, with the help of others, from early 1995 through July 1997, engaged in schemes "to defraud several large corporations." His affidavit said the inquiry had determined there had been "a large theft of funds" from the Anti-Defamation League.
The charges against Lyons and Edwards come eight months after revelations that the minister had been living a lavish lifestyle and that Edwards, whom he had hired in 1995 as the denomination's public relations director, had pleaded guilty to conspiring to embezzle.