Vernon R. Twyman Jr. is the president of and chief executive officer of Ventures 7000, Inc. Vernon’s interest in the Philippine Islands started when he was a boy and spent considerable time overseas due to his father being a U.S. Air Force non-commissioned officer.
During his youth, Vernon learned that he had a knack for entrepreneurship and business ventures; he started his first business when he was just 14 years old. At this time, he also found his faith, which plays a big role in his vision and mission for Ventures 7000.
Vernon Twyman graduated from Oral Robert University in 1978 and went on to work as an insurance agent, financial consultant, and asset manager before establishing and becoming CEO of BeneFund.
Over this time period, Vernon Twyman started working in the Philippines once again and establishing relationships with The Philippines government and the United States interest. The relationships he was able to build still exist today as Ventures 7000 works closely with the Philippines government in excavating stolen treasure from World War II.
Ventures 7000, Inc. is an Oklahoma corporation, and is wholly owned by Wycliffe Trust, a U.S. business trust created by Vernon Twyman. Wycliffe has pledged 90% of its profits to fund humanitarian causes and philanthropic endeavors throughout the world. Venture’s portion will be dedicated to funding Christian ministries, educational institutions, humanitarian causes, charitable endeavors, and cultural renewal, fulfilling our mission to recover these war treasures and use them to impact the nations!
During the Second World War, Japan conquered much of East and Southeast Asia and confiscated vast quantities of gold, silver, precious stones and other valuables. When it became too risky to get these treasures safely back to the main islands of Japan, Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese Imperial Command decided to safeguard much of this treasure at 175 locations in the Philippine Islands which was one of the countries they had conquered after Pearl Harbor and, which was now part of the Japanese Commonwealth.
In addition to these 175 large imperial repositories, the Japanese Army and Navy as
well as many of its officers and men also elected to hide their share of the plunder at
thousands of smaller sites throughout the Philippine Islands. The Japanese reasoned
that they could wait till a negotiated treaty ended the hostilities and then retrieve
their war booty. However, when the atomic bomb forced Japan to surrender
unconditionally, the Philippines and the plunder it held was no longer under their
control.
Since the end of the war, many of these treasures both large and small have been
recovered; however, to this day, billions of dollars of riches remain hidden in
numerous locations across the Philippine Islands.
Ventures 7000 and Vernon Twyman intends to recover as much of that remaining treasure as possible and use it to fulfill our three-part vision:
1. Create a One Hundred Billion Dollar Charitable Fund to provide financial
support for worthy Judeo-Christian based organizations and causes.
2. Financially empower those who share our passion for funding valuable philanthropic causes thus enabling them to increase their giving capacity.
3. Use matching grants long with fresh creative methods to increase funding from others for meaningful non-profit organizations at all levels.
The mission of Ventures 7000 is to locate and recover the remnants of the vast plundered treasures left in the Philippines by the Japanese at the end of World War II and then channel the net proceeds back to Wycliffe to fund worthy Christian ministries and Judeo-Christian humanitarian causes throughout the world, while successfully fulfilling each and every commitment to its financial and governmental partners.
In the mid-1980s, Vernon Twyman, the Founder, and CEO of Ventures 7000 was involved in the treasure recovery process in the Philippines in conjunction with several governmental entities, private individuals, and companies. This experience revealed the vast quantities of yet unrecovered treasures in the Philippines, but also encouraged Twyman to devise a structure whose mission would be far different from simply enriching a select few from the fruits of these recoveries.
For a number of years, Vernon Twyman also participated in and managed the liquidation of recovered treasure gold in both Asia and Europe. In 1996, Twyman created Wycliffe Trust, a U.S. business trust with a pre-eminent charitable focus. Wycliffe’s mission is to create a perpetual funding system that will generate ongoing profits to support worthwhile humanitarian causes and philanthropic endeavors based upon Judeo-Christian principles.
After revenue sharing and certain tax obligations are met, ninety percent (90%) of the net profit distributions from Wycliffe are ultimately designated to fund non-profit endeavors.
The Accumulation of Wealth in Asia
While the West has traditionally utilized gold primarily as a monetary metal and for jewelry, the religions of Asia have historically placed high value on the accumulation of gold for religious purposes. Beyond the religious aspects, it also important to note that for thousands of years, Asian culture has placed a very high value on gold, silver, and precious stones in both trade and commerce as well for wealth accumulation.
For centuries, the highly valued silk from the East was traded for Western gold for
centuries via the Silk Road that stretched from Eastern Asia to the Mediterranean Sea. Although, much of the New World’s gold, silver, and precious stones made its way across the Atlantic to the European colonizing nations, a significant portion made its way across the Pacific in the Spanish Galleon trade to be exchanged for silk, spices, teas, porcelain, and other luxuries of the East — which were How is it possible so much gold accumulated in Southeast Asia?
While the West has traditionally utilized gold primarily as a monetary metal, the religions of Asia have historically placed a high value on the accumulation of gold for religious purposes. The Shwedagon Pagoda, a Buddhist temple in Yangon, Myanmar (formerly Burma) is 344’ high and entirely gilded in gold. Its main stupa alone is plated with nearly 22,000 solid gold bars and estimates of the pagoda’s total gold are as high as 60 metric tons. Additionally, its spire boasts 2,300 rubies, sapphires, and other gems, and 4,000 golden bells.
While the Shwedagon Pagoda is the largest temple in Burma, it’s still just one of hundreds. Considering that Burma is one of the smallest and poorest countries in Southeast Asia, just imagine the wealth that these temples and shrines would contain in the larger and more prosperous countries of that region. Even today, Eastern cultures place a high value on jewelry containing high-quality precious metals – much of which has significant religious significance – for even the very poorest members of society, while much of the West is content to settle for costume jewelry for all but the most affluent. The undeniable result is that much of the world’s precious metal and precious stones supply continues to accumulate in the East. A
s the West moved more and more into paper currencies and other less tangible methods of wealth accumulation, the East continued to accumulate much of its wealth in the form of gold, silver, and precious stones. With World War II looming, England moved much of its financial reserves to Hong Kong, and Singapore; France sent its precious metal reserves to Indochina (now Vietnam); and the Dutch transferred their reserves to the East Indies (now Indonesia).
After the successful attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese rolled through all Southeast Asia looting these treasures along with the wealth of the Southeast Asian countries they conquered. As the war began to turn against the Axis powers, Germany sent some of its treasures looted from Europe and its own substantial gold reserves to its Japanese allies for safekeeping.
Much of this gold, silver, and precious stones as well as other treasures ended up in
the hands of the Japanese conquerors as they subdued China along with the twelve
nations and multiple colonies of Southeast Asia. Initially, the Japanese sought to bring these treasures back to their home islands. With its natural harbors and central location, the Philippines were used by the Japanese as a staging and processing area for troops and materials going into and out of the various war theaters, so it was only natural that the treasure would be routed through Manila or one of the other major Philippine ports before taking the final leg of the journey back to Japan.
However, as the war escalated, the American submarine forces began exacting a serious toll on Japanese vessels traveling between Southeast Asia and the Japanese mainland and many of these treasures began being lost at sea with little chance of future retrieval. The Japanese had to develop a better plan! General Yamashita was tasked with developing and implementing that plan. Since the Japanese fully expected to retain control of the Philippine Islands after WW II through a negotiated peace settlement, it made sense that they would choose to store the treasure in the Philippines until after the War was over, rather than risk losing more of it at sea.
Therefore, during the latter part of World War II, the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy stashed vast quantities of gold bullion along with other war treasures such as precious and semi-precious stones, silver, artifacts, and religious idols in the Philippine Islands with plans to retrieve it after the war. Although no one knows for sure the exact amount of treasure the Japanese stashed in the Philippines, unofficial estimates are in the hundreds of thousands of metric tons.
Reports indicate that there were 175 “official” Imperial sites established by the Japanese military and over 1,000 smaller sites were created by Japanese officers to store their own booty. The Japanese were highly skilled combat engineers who had mastered cave and tunneling techniques. In addition, they were highly adept at constructing booby traps. They used these techniques to hide the gold in hundreds of locations throughout the land areas and under the coastal waters of the islands. It has been said that much of the wealth of the world was amassed in the Philippines during WWII.
