Dubai: The portal Narada News probed the case of missing donations of K P Yohannan’s charitable organization Gospel for Asia (GFA).
The portal says it undertook the probe after reports appeared that GFA misused funds meant for charitable works in India.
GFA founder Kadappiliaril Punnose Yohannan, who is popularly known as K P Yohannan, met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 17 and donated 10 million rupees for the campaign to clean the Ganges River.
Narada News spoke to Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman PJ Kurien, who was present when KP Yohannan met the prime minister.
The portal says Kurien was apologetic and admitted he had made a mistake. He stated that he did not check the credentials of the individual and recently read reports about the siphoning of donation funds. He has ensured that there will be an inquiry into the matter and the culprits will be brought to book.
Earlier, a class-action lawsuit has been filed against GFA in the US with many allegations surfacing against it in Canada as well.
Gospel for Asia was established by Yohannan in 1978 and has its headquarters in the state of Texas. After learning of misuse of funds, donors have begun filing suits against the Gospel of Asia, reports stated.
Millions of dollars worth donations can’t be accounted for by the Indian, US and Canadian governments. The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability in the US cut ties with Yohannan’s organization last October for violating five of the council’s seven core standards.
Narada News investigation has revealed that Yohannan’s Gospel for Asia holds huge land banks in India. This substantiates the claim that Yohannan has in fact rerouted donations to profit from it. They have properties like 2,400 acres of rubber estate in Cheruvally, in Kerala, 36 acres in Gurgaon near Delhi, 240 acres cardamom estate in Munnar, Kerala, more than 1,000 acres in Tiruvalla and Changanacherry, 300 acres land just above Shillong lake, 42 acres in Panvel, Mumbai, 38 acres in Sriperumbudur tech city Chennai, 40 acres in Bangalore, 60 acres in Kolkata and 14 acres in Lucknow.
In fact they have land bank in every metro and tier-two city.
According to a report, GFA’s filings with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) reveal that the charitable organization collected donations to the tune of US$93.5 million and transferred the amount to India during the period of 2007-2014, but no such records exist with the Indian government showing that the money from Canada came to the charity’s Indian affiliates during the same period.
Accusations have been made by people like Warren Throckmorton, who runs a faith based website, and Bruce Morrison, pastor of the Christian Fellowship Church of New Glasgow in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia who raised funds for GFA for the past 20 years, that funds collected as donations have either not been spent on the said cause or been misused.
They have also claimed that the funds collected are not reflected in the work of Yohannan’s charities. Morrison has gone on to accuse that close to US$128 million in global donations received by GFA during 2007-2014 had gone “missing.” One of the most significant aspects about the GFA’s stated missions is to help improve the living condition of Dalits.
Allegations by Morrison infer that Yohannan is building an extensive for-profit corporate empire in India that includes a private hospital, private schools, a college, a rubber plantation that cost US$19 million to purchase, and even a professional soccer team based in Burma.
GFA has obviously denied any involvement in financial impropriety.
Their NGO, Bridge of Hope has collected a lot of funds to help purchase these land banks. The Bridge of Hope claims to have rehabilitated 65,000 children in India, but the fact of the matter is that this number is less than 10,000.
Also, they are taking US$300 per child from every donor to sponsor a kid per year. While the fact remains that the Bridge of Hope does not provide shelter or schooling to these children. They provide a child one banana, two biscuits and a small tetra pack of juice in the afternoon which would cost less than INR30, that too not all the days of a week.
Adopting such means, Yohannan’s charities have been siphoning off donations, a source revealed. We also found out that people have been employed by these charities to write letters on behalf of children to donors who contribute for the noble cause thinking their money is being put to right use. Our investigation has also revealed that Yohannan’s charities are sitting on a cash pile of 15 billion rupees according to an Reserve Bank of India official, who revealed on condition of anonymity.
The medical college in Tiruvalla was established after spending 6 billion rupees. The city already has 3 medical colleges, and is inhabited by families of rich Non Resident Indians. It is said the medical college was built for his son in law, who is a doctor.
Sources from his Believers Church have revealed how he used to instill fear in the minds of the staff by himself claiming that the money which comes in as charity is ‘blood money.’ The source recollects an instance when KP narrated a story of an old woman who used to live alone and died leaving behind a house and a telephone connection. Yohannan sold off the property to generate funds for his charities.
After receiving many complaints against Yohannan and his charities, the government of Kerala denied mutation of land by Yohannan and his organizations in the southern Indian state.
(Narada News is a Dubai-based portal that claims to collect, and disseminate news in a manner that is unbiased, and all-inclusive. “We want to make the best use possible of the immense amounts of information available by creating a network of sources; a network base that will be made up of ‘You’ – the content consumer – our ‘human news outlets,’ says the portal’s “About Us” section. It wants to team up their journalistic expertise, with the news gathering skills of their reader-base to create a refined and unique news product – the USP of which is investigative journalism.)