I'd like to refer back to this earlier post for a moment:
I highly doubt that their stringent annual accreditation process would over look a very blatant breaking of the rules of governance.
Here's the "stringent" accreditation process, straight from the ECFA website,
http://www.ecfa.org/Content/Membership-Requirements.
You fill out a form.
You attach the required financial documents.
You pay the fee.
If you bring in enough revenue, you submit to a financial audit.
According to a new article in
World Magazine, "fill out a form and pay a fee" turns out to be spot on. The author summarizes it very nearly as I did: "If an ECFA member turns in the necessary paperwork and pays its yearly dues, it retains its accreditation." The article can be found at
https://world.wng.org/2019/09/an_easy_a.
In other words, not a very stringent accreditation process, after all. One former member of the ECFA is quoted as saying, "We were just paying for a membership that really didn’t mean anything."
The author says that the lack of oversight is a result of the ECFA's means of generating revenue. They don't rely on donations; 75% of their revenue comes from membership fees.
ECFA has proceeded slowly with ministries getting into trouble. One reason could be organizational structure. ECFA pays its bills by charging membership fees to the organizations it’s supposed to monitor. In 2018 ECFA brought in more than $5 million in total revenue. Nearly three-fourths of that—$3.7 million—came from fees charged to its members...
If ECFA terminates members, it cuts off revenue. (Emphasis added.)
Once again, we see that ECFA membership is not a guarantee of any organization's trustworthiness.