By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Wednesday, September 17, 2025

Bishop Edir Macedo Bezerra, the billionaire founder of the neo-Pentecostal Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, who Brazilian authorities once accused of using church funds to enrich himself, has sold his luxury condo unit in the Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida, for $13 million.

The sale, which was made on Sept. 10, was reported by the real estate firm Redfin.

Macedo’s condo, which was previously sold brand new in 2016 for $9.65 million, is described by Redfin as “the height of coastal luxury.”

It’s a “one-of-a-kind duplex penthouse” boasting 6,121 square feet of space and the Dezervator — a private car elevator that goes directly to the condo’s four-car sky garage. The condo, which has four large bedrooms, high ceilings and floor-to-ceiling glass windows, also has a private balcony pool with ocean views.

Macedo and his family are proponents of the prosperity gospel, which teaches that "believers have a right to the blessings of health and wealth and that they can obtain these blessings through positive confessions of faith and the 'sowing of seeds' through the faithful payments of tithes and offerings."

The 80-year-old bishop has a net worth of $1.9 billion, according to Forbes, thanks to his ownership of Record, the second-largest broadcasting company in Brazil. He also owns a majority stake in the private Brazilian bank Banco Digimais.

While it is unclear where he got the money to buy the Record, prosecutors in Brazil accused the bishop and nine other people linked to his church in 2009 of stealing billions of dollars in donations from his mostly poor followers and using that money to enrich himself, The Associated Press reported.

Prosecutors alleged the church generated some $800 million in revenue from adherents in 4,500 temples across Brazil alone and claims to have nearly 8 million followers globally. They showed a history of financial dealings by Universal officials going as far back as the early 1990s, exchanging money sometimes in the church’s parking lot. The money was then sent to accounts controlled by Universal’s affiliates at five U.S. banks, then returned to Brazil as offshore loans.

The Universal Church has dismissed the allegations as “completely misleading and almost identical to those that gave rise to lawsuits and investigations that have already been tried and found to be not true.”

In 2019, The Rio Times reported that Macedo could no longer be sentenced for the charges that were brought against him because the statute of limitations had expired due to eight years of judicial delays.

That same year, the church was found guilty of forcing or pressuring pastors to undergo vasectomies in order to remain or advance in the organization. Former pastors alleged that the policy was instituted to make them more available to the institution and reduce complications when moving them between locations.