In a surprising development, the nation of India’s Ministry of Home Affairs has cancelled the registration of Gospel for Asia and three related organizations. According to the Times of India, Gospel for Asia (now called Ayana Charitable Trust) was the largest recipient of foreign funds in the nation during fiscal year 2016. The other affiliated organizations which lost registration are Believers’ Church, Last Hour Ministry and Love India Ministry. Believers’ Church is the ecclesiastical arm of GFA in Asia.
In India for a charity to accept foreign funds, the charity must be registered with the Ministry of Home Affairs. The organizations affiliated with Gospel for Asia have traditionally been among the richest in India. In FY 2016, these charities pulled in $206.5-million from foreign donors, most of that from the United States.
Gospel for Asia is the target of two RICO lawsuits in the U.S. Plaintiffs allege fraud and misuse of funds. At least one of these cases has been slated for trial in 2019. In October of 2015, GFA was evicted from membership in the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability for multiple violations of EFCA’s financial standards. GFA vowed to regain membership in the financial watchdog but has yet to satisfy ECFA requirements.
In 2016, GFA was sanctioned by the federal Office of Personnel Management for failing to abide program standards. As a consequence, the U.S. government banned GFA from accepting donations from federal employees during the annual workplace charitable fund drive.
In 2015, it was learned that GFA leaders asked student visitors to India to take U.S. dollars into India without reporting the funds to customs officials.
Below is the cancellation notice on India Ministry of Home Affairs website for Ayana Charitable Trust (formerly Gospel for Asia in India).
GFA does business in India under other organizational names that apparently have not been cancelled (e.g., New Hope Foundation, Holy Spirit Ministries) but most funds go to the four cancelled entities. In practice, the move might not immediately hurt Believers’ Church and GFA in India because the organization has hoarded so much cash over the past decade.
Category: Gospel for Asia
After Being Fired, Former Gospel for Asia Employee Looks for Help
Tom Sluberski once was the web director for Gospel for Asia. He has since left and become a vocal critic of GFA. In a GoFundMe page entry, he highlights the case of Michelle Alexander, 72, a former employee at GFA. In a video, Michelle tells a story of being fired after she invested over 12 years and her life’s savings in GFA.
Watch:
Michelle was given 30 days to get off the campus based on a “leadership decision.” She said she was not given a reason. The GoFundMe page begins:
Please help Michele, age 72, she had been with a ministry called Gospel for Asia for 12.5 years. Michele was planning on being at that ministry her whole life, in fact she gave the ministry her life savings. In June 2017 Michele was called into a meeting with HR and told she had 30 days to leave the campus and she was no longer part of the ministry. That was shocking to Michele, she had been recovering from a recent knee replacement surgey and leg surgery. Now she had to pack up and find somewhere new to live. The ministry even took it upon themselves to notify Michele’s supporters that she was leaving, even before they told Michele.
A request for comment or correction was requested from GFA with no reply.
Social Crusader and Metropolitan K.P. Yohannan Waxes Eloquent about Charity in India
Yesterday, K.P. Yohannan, self-styled social crusader and Metropolitan of Believers’ Church, published an article in the Indian online publication Bureaucracy Today on charity finances. Next issue, BT should invite Bernie Madoff to pen an article on business ethics.
Some highlights:
However, checks and balances in the NGO space, like in any other system are an integral part of this support mechanism. Without effective and robust assessment machinery, it will become very difficult to sustain the credibility and utility of NGOs.
In fact, it would be fair to say that scrutiny and regulation of organizations in NGO space is far more critical than that of the private sector. This is because humanitarian organizations compliment and supplement the efforts of the state in a country of the size and diversity like ours. So whereas the government is at the forefront of inclusive growth for all sections of the society, civil society participation becomes imperative to achieve the expected pace of reform. And therefore it is sacrosanct that the credibility of these civil society participants is maintained with full caution in public eye.
This from the leader of an organization who was kicked out of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability in October 2015 and sanctioned by the Office of Personnel Management in January of 2016. GFA has not been reinstated to either organization. On the point of credibility in the public eye, GFA has not released an audited financial statement for the past two fiscal years.
Another quote:
There are a host of reasons why the narrative in India has changed to NGO versus state. Whereas some of the NGOs have been accused of funding anti-national activities, others have been accused of financial impropriety. These are grave charges and it is but natural that the relevant authorities have taken timely action to intervene.
This statement comes from the leader of the organization being sued for fraud in the U.S.
As GFA’s lawyer said, I am a blogger that regularly blogs and will continue to remind donors about the “grave charges” until the “relevant authorities” intervene.
Plaintiff’s Lawyer in the Gospel for Asia Fraud Case: Show Us Where the Money Went
“There is a blogger that regularly blogs. I’m certain that there will be something about this hearing on his blog because he follows the PACER regularly in everything that comes out, and there are a group of people that are — they — it’s a little bit of a family feud between these ex-employees and GFA.” – Robert Mowrey, attorney for Gospel for Asia, May 16, 2017.
On May 16, a hearing was held to set the calendar and procedures for the racketeering (RICO) lawsuit against Gospel for Asia brought by Garland and Phyllis Murphy (See this for an earlier post on that hearing).
I have secured a copy of the transcript of that hearing and plan to bring out some highlights over the next few weeks. I have plenty of time since the hearing isn’t slated to happen until 2019. One hopes GFA’s leadership will not use donor funds to drag this case out that long, but it appears that GFA and GFA’s well paid lawyers plan to do exactly that.
At the beginning of the hearing, the judge in the case, Timothy Brooks, summarized the allegations and GFA’s denials of the charges. Then the judge gave the Murphy’s lead attorney, Marc Stanley, a chance to present his own summary. Stanley made the situation simple: Show us where the money went.
MR. STANLEY: Thank you. Thank your Honor. I think the Court summarized the case pretty well, and what I thought would be important for today is sort of defining the different approaches of the two sides in discovery and where we’re trying to go with the case based on the allegations.
From our case, it’s pretty simple. It’s what did the defendants promise the plaintiffs. So, for instance, “Will you give me a thousand dollars for a Jesus Well?” “Yes, I’ll give you a thousand dollars for for a Jesus Well.” That’s the first one.
What did the plaintiffs give and then what did the defendants do with the money? “I give you a thousand dollars; show me it went to a Jesus Well.” Not hard to figure out. Either it did or it didn’t; either they can show it or they can’t.And then, third, we’ve alleged a RICO conspiracy and fraud because what we allege happened is that a lot of this money did not even go to the field and a lot of this money went into for-profit enterprises like a hospital, a chain of hospitals, chain of educational facilities, a media empire, a soccer team in Myanmar, a railroad plantation. For a long time, there was $287 million on deposit in banks in India; there was $130 million in deposit in Hong Kong. And so what’s going on there?
We allege a RICO conspiracy. The kingpin is K.P. Yohannan, who is the chairman of Gospel for ASIA, Inc., but he’s also the metropolitan of Believers Church, and the metropolitan is sort of like a pope there. The constitution’s very clear — the constitution of the church — that the metropolitan, by virtue of his office, is the president and final authority of the church government, including the managing trustee, the president of all trusts and societies of Believer’s Church, and the custodians of Believers Church at large. And it goes on and on to say he has the ultimate authority of everything that goes on with the church. The properties are in his name, K.P. Yohannan’s name, a lot of the businesses and the properties there. It’s not just Believers Church. There’s also Gospel for Asia-India. There’s also Bridge of Hope Trust. There are a whole bunch of folks that we’re just finding “Gospel for Asia 75 LLC, Gospel for Asia 275 LLC, there’s Way of Hope LLC. We’ve got entities all over. It’s almost like the Enron transactions that we’re trying to unravel.
There’s — we’ve got entities in Germany that formed an alliance with Canada. We’ve got money allegedly going to Sri Lanka and other places. And so what we’re trying to find out is what did the plaintiffs give, what was promised, what did they give and what did defendants do with it. Did it line someone’s pockets; and if that’s the case, then we want them to give it back.Now, you also said, you mentioned that the defendants’ contention was that all monies were used as the donors specified. If that’s the case, we lose.
This is an easy case. Just show us that the money that came in to Gospel for Asia — right now. I mean, they can — if that’s the case, they could show us tomorrow: The money that came in for Gospel for Asia was spent exactly as the donors said — “we dug this many wells, we bought this many camels, we did whatever else” — and we lose.
It’s not a hard case for that kind of discovery to do it. They should have records of showing, as fiduciaries of the money, what they did with the money.
As Stanley pointed out, GFA could do this tomorrow. The barrier to discovery is GFA. The primary reason GFA is in the situation they are in is because they won’t do the reasonable thing and show the donors where the money went.
Does Believers’ Church Follow The Church Constitution?
Later in the proceedings, Robert Mowrey, one of GFA’s lawyers said K.P. Yohannan doesn’t have control of matters in India’s Believers’ Church. According to Mowrey:
Mr. Stanley has mentioned over and over how K. P. Yohannan just controls everything. There are many — there are entities in India: The Believers Church, GFA-India. K. P. Yohannan is not on the board of those entities. Is he the metropolitan? Yes, he is the Metropolitan of Believers Church. Does that mean he has access to all of their records? No, it doesn’t.
Now, Mr. Stanley doesn’t believe that. Mr. Stanley thinks that whatever K. P. Yohannan wants, he can get; but we have no problem in producing everything we can with respect to the entities that he has sued. But when it comes to wholly separate entities in India, that’s where the rub is.
Believers’ Church may have altered documents over the last year but at the time the Murphys donated to GFA, Yohannan most certainly was considered the head of the church for spiritual and temporal matters according to the church Constitution (see also this source). He also sat/sits on the boards of many other Believers’ Church entities (see this post for more information).
I think this will be difficult for GFA’s lawyers to explain.
Stay tuned for more GFA posts from the blogger who regularly blogs.
Metropolitan of Believers' Church K.P. Yohannan Will Face Jury in Fraud Case
This is the same news as I reported yesterday but with a twist. The organization which funnels money from all over the world to India — Gospel for Asia — is at the center of two racketeering and fraud lawsuits brought by former donors in Arkansas. The founder of GFA and Believers’ Church in India (the main recipient of GFA’s funds) — K.P. Yohannan — is a defendant in the lawsuits. So is his wife and son. One of those suits was cleared by a federal judge to proceed with discovery and to hold a jury trial slated for April 15, 2019.
This is actually bigger news in India than in the U.S.
Despite being the second largest mission organization in the nation, GFA isn’t well known in the U.S. However, in India, Yohannan is a rock star. He has met with the prime minister, regularly entertains politicians, and is the temporal and spiritual head of Believers’ Church, which owns billions of dollars in assets and claims over 2 million members. Think of the most famous religious figure in the U.S., and K.P. Yohannan is a comparable figure in India.
On church publications, Yohannan goes by His Eminence the Most Rev. Dr. K.P. Yohannan.
Yohannan’s religious empire includes over a dozen secondary schools, a medical school, an engineering school, a finance company, a soccer team, three hospitals, and a broadcasting company. Most of these ventures are for profit. Unless the parties settle out of court, Yohannan will no doubt be put on the witness stand in Arkansas and forced to answer questions about money smurfing American cash to India, a $20-million transfer from an Indian affiliate to complete construction of the American headquarters, funds not showing up in reports, board members being forced out in Canada and a host of other issues.
