Court to resolve battle for control of temple

Stacy J. Willis

Thursday, May 27, 1999 | 11:43 a.m.

Rows of shoes sit outside the wooden doors of the Buddha Pavana temple in northwest Las Vegas as if nothing has changed.

For about a decade, members of the local Thai community have respectfully left their sandals and boots on the stoop before entering this quiet house of worship -- a stucco and Spanish tile version of their traditional temples -- to pray and to congregate, to share in meditation and in study.

But lately, the serenity at Pavana has been ransacked by a battle for control of the temple. Charges of slander. Claims of malfeasance. Protests. Threats. Talk of monks starving or being evicted from their temple. This morning, instead of gathering at Pavana for peaceful contemplation, more than 100 members of the Thai community planned to meet at the Clark County Courthouse to let a judge resolve their trenchant dispute. One side -- a group claiming to have followers of more than 300 people -- says that the self-appointed director of the temple is mismanaging it and refusing to step aside.

The other side -- primarily director Songvuth Charoen Banpachon -- says through his attorney that he is justifiably controlling the temple as he has done for more than 10 years, and that his opponents are perhaps making a "power play" for the temple's estimated $1.5 million in assets.

The matter, which has been festering for about four years, has grown from a disagreement between associates into a fight that challenges both the cohesion of the immigrant population and the reach of state and federal law: What authority does the court have in determining the management of religious organizations?

The coalition of worshippers is asking the civil court to stop Banpachon from controlling the temple's corporate affairs and allow an open election of officers. Banpachon has counter-sued -- he also is asking for an injunction to stop the group from attempting to take control of the management.

Both sides have asked for punitive damages in addition to injunction. "You have to understand that this has been going on a long time, and people are very angry," Ropchai Premsrirut, a local real estate agent who attends the temple, said. "It is very, very important to Thai people because the Thai temple performs a very important function in the way of life of Thai people. It is not just spiritual and moral but the center of economic and social life."

The plaintiffs allege that Banpachon has rewritten the bylaws of the nonprofit corporation to give himself control "for life."

And, they say, he is not spending the temple's money as they would prefer -- for upkeep and improvement of the temple. The money was donated by the entire community over the course of many years.

Banpachon's attorney, Charles Lybarger, said his client legally controls the corporate side of the temple -- including the bank account, estimated to hold about $130,000 -- because he was one of five original members of the corporation listed on the corporate filings; three of whom have left. The fifth supports Banpachon as director.

"Whoever the members of the corporation are, they elect officers and trustees," said Lybarger.

And they have elected themselves. "That's not fair. This is the people's temple. We want to be a part of the management of the temple," Tewan Parnishsuko, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said. "That would be justice."

"This is not Thailand. This is the U.S., and this is a democracy," Watana Pongpan, a longtime supporter of the temple who sides with Parnishsuko, said.

More than 100 members of the congregation recently held a protest outside the temple and have hosted several fundraisers to pay for legal fees -- the most recent held on April 13 at Union Plaza and attended by mayoral candidate Arnie Adamsen.

Banpachon, who did not return phone calls to the Sun, has raised the ire of congregants by evicting a monk for "improper conduct" and allegedly hiring security guards to escort people off of the temple grounds when they tried to hold an election to replace him.

"I think it's a personality dispute," Lybarger said. "They just don't like him. It may just be a power play, straightforward. They want to go straight for the bank account.

"There's been a lot of BS thrown out there to try to besmirch my client," Lybarger said. "He has run this temple for 15 years without getting paid a penny. This guy has done nothing but good. Now suddenly after 15 years of sweat, they want to oust him, and they make all these allegations. "His fear is that they are not interested in the well-being of the temple but in the assets."

Building a communityInside Thai Town on Las Vegas Boulevard, there is a restaurant and bar, cool air conditioning, vinyl booths and a big-screen TV. The service is quiet and friendly, and frequent visitors can slip into the back hallway to play a social game of cards on a folding table if the mood strikes.

"(Banpachon) and I used to be friends," Pongpan, who opened the restaurant shortly after moving to Las Vegas from Thailand in the early 1980s, said. At that time, there were only about 100 Thais in the area, he said. Now there are more than 1,000 Thai immigrants.

"We all knew each other back then," he said. The Thai community first formed a religious organization in Las Vegas in 1982, when they opened a temple in a home near Sandhill and Flamingo roads. For several years thereafter, the group -- which included both Banpachon and members of the opposing coalition -- began raising funds to build a freestanding temple.

"Nobody gave $100,000 or any large amount of money. Everyone put some in in the beginning to start the fund raising -- some put in $500 or $200 just to get it started. It was everyone together," Pongpan said.

"The whole congregation bought the new property on Simmons," Premsrirut said.

Pavana is a 3,000-square-foot structure built on 10 acres of land at the corner of Simmons and Gowan streets -- now buttressed by subdivisions on all sides. Seven monks live in the temple, which has a kitchen and bedrooms down the hall from the main Buddha-statue-filled sanctuary. The monks are fully dependent on the donations to the temple to support them.

"The monks struggle," said Pongpan. "We are sometimes afraid for the monks. We don't want them to starve. The monk is not supposed to do anything, only religion. They are not supposed to work or get married or do anything else. They have to be taken care of by the community. But when the community puts money in the donation box, they don't know where it is going. Only Banpachon and his second (man) have a key. They do not ask us how to spend it." Monk Jim Kantasriro has been at the Pavana temple for six years. On Wednesday he stood in the sanctuary wearing a saffron monk's robe and when asked about the temple's management, his face sank into a frown.

"We have a problem with the management," Kantasriro said. "The temple should belong to everybody. Instead, we have a dictator. This man has been a dictator since the beginning, and he spent all the money. The monks never know where the money goes. He cut the monks out. We need improvements to the temple. We need another building."

After years of growth in the congregation, the temple today is overflowing with old furniture and musical instruments and boxes of stuff that the monks say needs to be stored in a separate facility. Despite original plans to build a meditation center, a garden area, and storage facility, Banpachon has taken no action to expand the temple, Pongpan said.

Kantasriro walked briskly through the cramped hallways of the temple pointing to items in need of repair: damaged kitchen cupboards, malfunctioning bathroom plumbing, ripped chairs.

Dozens of drums are stacked high in the bathroom making it difficult to get to the toilet. In the hallways atop the matted red carpet are boxes and water bottles stacked high, making passage to the bedrooms single file and cramped. The emergency exit is blocked by an old sofa pushed against the wall and covered with a blanket.

Outside, a couple of aluminum storage sheds are packed -- several crates and a couple of broken chairs lean against the block wall surrounding the yard. Nevertheless, a bright gold-painted Buddha statue sits atop a silver throne some 10-feet high, surrounded by candles and incense.

"What we're trying to do is make it nice and to make it a center for the Buddhist people," Pongpan said. "We want people to feel good when they go to the temple. We want to take care of it better."

"When we go to the temple, we listen to the monks pray and talk about what is good or bad. It is very serene, and very quiet, and everybody is supposed to go and listen and concentrate and meditate. It is supposed to make you feel happy," Pongpan said.

"Not a lot of people are happy about it right now."

Who has authority?The parties have been in court before, but the matter has either been dropped, dismissed or only partially addressed.

At the heart of the dispute is a question about the nature of the temple management: Was it intended to be a hierarchy or a congregation? Does the court have the authority to decide whether it should be a hierarchy or a congregation?

"That's the key issue in this case," Lybarger said. "That issue will be addressed by the judge. In some Protestant congregations, everybody gets together and decides church policy. It's congregational. In the Catholic Church, you don't have any right to tell them how to run it. It's a classic hierarchy. "The congregation never runs a Thai Buddhist temple."

Maybe not in Thailand, Pongpan said, "But this is the U.S. and we are a democracy."

In a hearing last year, which did not resolve the dispute, District Court Judge Nancy A. Becker cautioned that although a "religious organization is one where the Court has authority to ensure that the organization is being run properly from a business standpoint ... issues with regard to religion itself are beyond the Court's scope." In her opinion, the matter of hierarchy vs. congregational management falls under the business side of the temple management rather than religious, and can be addressed by a court.

The previous action was dropped after Becker recommended that the parties try to resolve the issue themselves.

But in a nonbinding opinion, Becker said she thinks the articles of incorporation "contemplate a congregational membership, not two people who claim they are the only ones who can vote. And my feeling is legally you're estopped from asserting that position at this point. Otherwise, in my opinion, it is fraud.

"The IRS would never, ever have allowed you to be a nonprofit religious organization based upon two people saying we're the members, and all these other people are really just sort of out there in the temple, but they're not members and they have no vote and it's really run for the two of us and how we want it to be run. I don't think you can do that."

Lybarger's response to Becker's opinion is that it is "merely her opinion and not legally binding."

The preliminary injunction hearing was scheduled for 9 a.m. today.

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