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Some 300 officials and organizations worldwide received packets from the Solar Temple, all mailed by cult member Patrick Vuarnet, the son of one of France's best-known skiers, on instructions from Jouret. Vuarnet, now in Swiss custody, was one of several well-connected converts to the Solar Temple, many of whom signed over their assets. Investigators suggested that the cult may have amassed as much as $93 million and that part of the money was used to support a posh life-style for Jouret and Di Mambro and to buy houses in Western Europe and Canada. Last week at least five more Temple properties were discovered. Two of them -- an apartment near Montreux, Switzerland, and a villa near Avignon, France -- had been rigged to explode in flames.
Swiss, French and Canadian officials also probed the possibility that Jouret < and Di Mambro had been involved in gunrunning or money-laundering schemes. Jouret had publicly urged followers to stockpile weapons to prepare for the end of the world and last year pleaded guilty in Canada to illegal arms possession. Canadian officials confirmed they were pursuing specific information implicating Di Mambro in money laundering, but they expressed skepticism at a report that Solar Temple leaders had purchased guns and other military equipment in Australia and resold the materiel in the Third World.
While Australian federal police found no such link, they discovered Jouret and Di Mambro had repeatedly visited the country beginning in the mid-1980s. People who met Jouret say he was fascinated by Ayers Rock, the huge monolith sacred to the Aborigines that rises from the desert floor in Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. He apparently told acquaintances that the rock's "mystic appeal" had drawn him to Australia and that he had applied to hold a religious service there. The Aborigines, who control access to Ayers Rock, turned him down.