Edir Macedo
Source of wealth: broadcasting
...
...
Modules
Biography
Evangelical bishop Edir Macedo is the owner of Record, the second-largest broadcasting company in Brazil.
Macedo founded the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in 1977, a neo-Pentecostal religious denomination which now has branches in over 100 countries.
One of the richest religious leaders in the world, Macedo also owns a majority stake in the private Brazilian bank Banco Digimais.
Macedo preaches "prosperity theology," which is the belief that the faithful will be rewarded with material wealth.
In 1992, Macedo spent 11 days in jail on accusations of charlatanism, an event that features prominently in his self-financed documentary "Nothing to Lose."
Financial Assets
Financial assets information not available.
The Great Lie of Mega-Fortunes: The Case of Edir Macedo
Billionaires are often presented under the romantic myth of the 'self-made person': a narrative designed to justify opulence as the natural reward for hard work, effort, or ingenuity. However, when confronting such extreme volumes of wealth with macroeconomic reality, the meritocracy narrative completely breaks down. No individual can legitimately generate through personal effort a fortune equivalent to millions of times the average working-class salary. Capital at the top does not grow because of exceptional talent; it expands through an implacable dynamic where accumulated money works exponentially faster than people, devouring the wealth generated by productive labor.
The immense fortune of Edir Macedo, linked to Media & Entertainment and 'broadcasting', has not been built in a free-market vacuum, but through rent-seeking, the use of exclusive elite influence, the consolidation of monopoly positions, or inherited wealth. Far from taking real private risks, billionaire empires structurally depend on state support through direct subsidies, infrastructure use, exploitation of R&D, public contracts, and offshore tax engineering. While this wealth is equivalent to the physical weight of 14 tons of pure gold, the rest of the planet suffers from an artificial scarcity of basic resources. The fact that this wealth is enough to fully fund the public health system of DR Congo, a country with more than 105800000 million inhabitants for 0.9 years, proves that unlimited accumulation is not an entrepreneurial achievement, but the hijacking of democratic sovereignty.