K.P. Yohannan – Warren Throckmorton

Gospel for Asia in Canadian Court Hearing: Once You Find Out the Truth About Your Donation, Stop Giving If You Don’t Like It

Today, a Canadian court held a hearing to decide whether or not a lawsuit would be certified as a class action suit. Attorney Paul Guy represented plaintiff Greg Zentner in the effort to certify the case as a class action suit representing all donors to Gospel for Asia – Canada.

Attorney Jeffrey Leon represented GFA – Canada and argued that the suit should not be certified as a class action suit. Leon also made an argument that donors have no standing to sue since they suffer no loss when they donate, even to a fraudulent organization. Leon told Justice Cavanaugh that Canadian authorities could weigh in and prosecute fraud if it exists. However, individual donors don’t have a loss to sue over, according to Leon.

It was curious to me that Leon sought to cast doubt on the identity of GFA in India during the recent raids on Believers’ Church. Even though the funds sent to Believers’ Church came from GFA, he sought to distance K.P. Yohannan’s organization in India from GFA-Canada. Overall, it appears to be a large part GFA-Canada’s defense to pretend there is no connection between GFA-Canada, GFA-World, Believers’ Church and the various trusts in India.

Yohannan’s organizations are controlled by him and his family. Various national groups send their money to Believers’ Church in India (or at least did when Believers’ Church was allowed to accept those funds). Money was donated in Canada with the intention of sending it to India for use by Believers’ Church. If donors checked one box for use of their funds (e.g., poor people), but those funds went for building for profit hospitals and schools or a purpose other than checked by the donor, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the charity misled the donor.

Read the briefs (“facta” in Canada) associated with the case thus far.

Factum for Greg Zentner (plaintiff)

Respondents Factum Pat Emerick and GFA World

Factum of the United States Defendants, Gospel for Asia, Kadappiliaril Punnose Yohannan, Daniel Punnose, and David Carroll

Reply Factum of Greg Zentner

Observations

Jeffrey Leon said K.P. Yohannan doesn’t have control over the GFA/Believers Church organizations. Historically, Yohannan has been in control, but I can see claiming he isn’t or hasn’t been in charge is an ongoing part of GFA’s defense. However, I have shown in numerous blog posts that Yohannan is involved in nearly all of the GFA organizations around the world. He has said in the past he doesn’t sit on the boards in India; however, I showed that he does (or at least did in 2015).

It is stunning that GFA’s lawyers cast doubt on the charities raided by India authorities. As a legal strategy, one can claim that hearsay can’t be admitted, but this is deceptive. Of course, the Indian government raided Believers’ Church, the same church that is run by K.P. Yohannan and takes funds from GFA-Canada and GFA affiliated organizations around the world. What do all of the donations go for? They are sent to India. Since 2017, those funds have been received illegally. Who knew about that? Who approved it? Who used those funds despite them being accepted from Canada against Indian law? Is anybody really going to try to make a case that K.P. Yohannan didn’t authorize all of those actions?

GFA’s case summed up by attorney Jeffrey Leon is this: If you don’t like how we used your donations, then don’t give us any more money. And if you want to claim we used it fraudulently, then tell it to the regulatory agencies. Don’t sue us for fraud.

What a smug, dismissive line of thinking. How are donors supposed to know what they are donating to if GFA doesn’t tell them? When donors find out that funds are used for purposes other than specified, it is too late.

Johnnie Moore’s Gospel for Asia Evasive Maneuvers

Yesterday, I posted a link to a CBC radio documentary about Gospel for Asia’s use of Canadian funds. In this program by Angela MacIvor, PR guru Johnnie Moore was interviewed and made some dubious claims. I take one of them up today. I’ll examine the others in future posts.

During the interview with Moore, MacIvor asked

Can you explain how it’s possible in a period between 2007-2014, GFA reported to the Canadian Revenue Agency that nearly $94-million left Canada and went to India during that time period but GFA reported to the Indian government that zero dollars went to India?

Moore gave a truly extraordinary answer:

I contest that those statistics are factual. The organization has always contested that that is a factual characterization of that and not to mention the organization doesn’t exclusively operate in India. They operate, their partner, they operate in 20 other countries around the world as well.

This issue was one of the earliest matters I researched regarding GFA. In June 2015, I asked former GFA COO David Carroll why funds listed in Canada as going to India didn’t show up as arriving from Canada in Indian documents. He told me:

The Canadian funds were combined with U.S. funds by our auditor in India for various accounting reasons. There is no requirement that they be reported separately.

However, in the Indian reports, funds were listed as originating from other nations, such as Australia, Germany and the UK. According to Indian regulations and contrary to Carroll’s claim, the national source of the funds has to be listed. As noted by MacIvor, for an 8 year period, it appeared Canada had not sent funds when in fact, almost $94-million had been donated specifically for India.

I want to make it clear that Moore’s mention of the other nations where GFA works is irrelevant. The Canadian branch of GFA specifically said in government reports (see this post for images of those reports) the money was being sent to India. This information must be reported accurately. If GFA Canada wanted to send it somewhere else, then some other nation would have been listed. Moore’s statement about other nations was a distraction.

In response to what appeared to be gaslighting from Moore, MacIvor followed up by asked if GFA wants the public to ignore those public reports. Moore’s answer was stunning:

I am not saying you shouldn’t look at those. People ought to have the humility to ask themselves a more important question which is: What is it that I might not know about this? What is the information that I might not have? Or the information that might not be available in the public domain? And I think there are vast gaps between the two pieces of information.

Humility? It is the height of arrogance for Johnnie Moore to accuse donors, former staff of GFA, and members of the public of lacking humility. Since 2015, hundreds of people have been asking GFA for answers to questions about their financial practices only to be met with silence or evasion. When I asked these exact questions (what don’t I know? what can make this make sense?), all I got was silence and name-calling. When a federal judge wanted answers to questions like this, all he got was stone-walling from GFA. I wish the reporter would have asked Johnnie Moore about the sanctions Judge Timothy Brooks imposed on GFA for failure to respond to questions about financial information during the fraud lawsuit brought by Garland and Phyllis Murphy.

Then Moore dodged the last question posed by MacIvor when she rightfully asked for the information we mere mortals don’t have. Moore’s reply?

Yeah, first of all, that’s a question for the Believers Eastern Church in India and around the world. That’s a question that needs to be asked of them.

How convenient. K.P. Yohannan isn’t available, so they bring in Moore from D.C. to speak for Yohannan on GFA matters, but when Moore turns the attention to Believers’ Church, all of sudden he can’t speak for Yohannan.

Moore got away without answering the questions. So Moore chides the public for failure to understand something he refuses to disclose. The appeal to Believers Church is a disgusting dodge. Not only is Yohannan the head of the church, but GFA in Canada and the U.S. is responsible for how donor funds are spent. GFA needs to know why the funds they sent to India didn’t show up in records there. It is obvious GFA knows or else they would just as concerned about it (where is our money?).

There are two other issues I want to take up from this interview. First, what does it mean that all the funds given to “the field” went to the field? Second, what about those hospitals in India? Moore was asked about that and misrepresented the situation. More to come in future posts…

Gospel for Asia: Does This Look Evangelical?

In his recent video defense of Believers’ Church in India, Gospel for Asia CEO and Believers’ Church Metropolitan K.P. Yohannan told Francis Chan that his church was “hard core evangelical.” Below watch Yohannan lead what looks like a kind of mass.

A relative of Yohannan’s sent this video to me and said it was a mass of the BC. I can’t understand what is happening so I can’t say for sure what this is. I will say that it doesn’t look like any evangelical church service I have ever attended.

As I have said several times when commenting about BC, I don’t care what they do. The reason I point this out is because it seems to be a matter of great importance to GFA to portray the organization — here and in Asia — as evangelical. Donors who care about this designation and about what this means should know that it may mean something very different there than here. I also think that GFA should simply represent their field partner accurately.

Gospel for Asia and Compliance with ECFA’s Standards: The 2015 Letter, Part 5

In CEO and founder K.P. Yohannan’s recent “exclusive personal response” to the fraud lawsuit settlement involving Gospel for Asia, Yohannan traces GFA’s problems to a “confidential letter from a financial standards association we were part of, and of which we were a charter member.” That letter was from the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability and outlined 17 potential violations of ECFA financial standards. In October 2015, ECFA evicted GFA from membership. To help donors understand the nature of the concerns ECFA had about GFA, I am posting one of the concerns each day. You can read all of the posts by clicking this link.

Read the entire ECFA letter on GFA’s compliance issues here.

From that letter, here is the fifth compliance issue:

5. Lack of discretion and control over funds granted to foreign entities. During our review on June 3, ECFA staff raised questions regarding GFA’s oversight and control of funds sent to foreign field partners. GFA’s staff indicated that the foreign field partners are completely independent organizations and therefore GFA did not exercise any direct control over field partners. GFA staff also indicated that they did not have a foreign grant process in place to oversee the use of funds.

Given legal requirements on tax-exempt entities to have appropriate discretion and control over the use of funds sent to foreign entities, ECFA staff indicated that GFA’s lack of a grant process appears to violate ECFA Standard 4’s requirement to follow applicable laws.

Subsequent to these conversations, on August 21, GFA staff indicated a new foreign grant process was developed with the assistance of its new audit firm and will be in effect as of September 1, 2015.

Our review of the board minutes did not indicate the GFA board had approved, or even been notified, of GFA’s minimal oversight of funds provided to field partners.

For reasons I cannot explain, GFA has publicly claimed no control over what happens with donations in Asia. K.P. Yohannon has repeatedly claimed that he is not on any boards in Asia. As recently as last month, he told Francis Chan, he has no more control over Believers’ Church than the other Bishops.

This claim was thrown into doubt during the fraud lawsuit due to discovery of an email from Chief Operating Officer David Carroll to K.P. Yohannan. In it, Carroll said to Yohannan:

We can say all we want that we don’t have anything to do with the Believers Church or the field and that you are only the spiritual head of the church and that finances are handled by others but you, but as a practical matter, that will not hold up.

The Believers’ Church constitution makes it clear that Yohannan is the final and supreme authority in temporal and spiritual matters. Perhaps GFA didn’t want to own up to the level of control Yohannan possesses.

In any case, the claim that Believers Church and GFA-India (now known as Ayana Charitable Trust) had no input from Yohannan seems implausible. At this time, both charities in India are barred from accepting foreign funds since their registration as charities was revoked in 2017. GFA-USA is sending funds to NGOs which act as shell organizations for the purpose of funneling money to Believers’ Church.

Donors should know that funds given to GFA don’t go directly to GFA in India. Some funds go to other nations in Asia but most goes to entities in India that have no operational presence in the country. They exist to receive funds and give them to Believers’ Church or some other BC controlled entity. I have asked various authorities if this is allowed but have not received an answer as yet.

Next post: 6. GFA solicits funds for narrower purposes than the eventual expenditure of the funds.

Gospel for Asia and Compliance with the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability’s Standards: The 2015 Letter, Part 3

Read the entire ECFA letter on GFA’s violations here.

From that letter, here is the third compliance issue:

3. Delay in sending funds to the field. It was not until the meeting on August 12 that we learned that $47,898,342, or approximately 82%, of gifts received by GFA in 2014 designated for India were not sent to the field until the last two days of the calendar year.

To be clear, nearly $50 million of gifts were raised from January to December, with only modest amounts sent to the field until the end of the year. ECFA staff expressed concern over failing to send gifts to the field on a timely basis, raising compliance issues under ECFA Standards 4, 7.1, and 7.2, particularly given the urgent nature of many GFA gift solicitations. Subsequent to this discovery, GFA staff indicated that field partners requested the delay of sending the funds to the field due to challenges in transmitting funds into India. ECFA could not confirm if the delay in transferring the funds was justified.

Based on ECFA’s review of GFA’s internal financial statements as of June 30, 2015, GFA had a cash balance of $28,338,841 in funds designated for foreign field partners, or more than the total of all funds received for the field in the first half of 2015. In other words, the practice of sending funds to the field on a significantly delayed basis was not only followed for 2014 but also during the first half of 2015.

GFA staff informed ECFA on August 12 that part of the cash balances held by GFA on June 30 were transferred to field partners during the month of July. On August 21, GFA staff indicated there is now a plan to send funds to field partners on the 15th of each month.

When ECFA staff asked if the board was apprised of the delays in transferring funds to the field, GFA staff indicated the board was informed of this fact because the board received periodic financial statements. However, the internal financial statements erroneously reflected field funds as a liability and as an expense immediately upon receiving the funds. Thus, it would have been very difficult for the board to learn of the delays in sending funds to the field because the interim financial statements indicated the funds had been sent to the field when they had not. Therefore, ECFA found no indication that the board had approved, or even been clearly informed of the questionable practice of delaying sending funds to the field.

One of the reasons former GFA board member Gayle Erwin resigned related to his realization that he was being kept in the dark about how funds were spent. In this case, funds were being held from the field. Even though GFA representatives urgently solicited donations, the funds were not sent until near the end of the year.

There was no problem in submitting funds to India. However, the field partner Believers Church (K.P. Yohannan is the head of that church as well as CEO of GFA) may not have liked the scrutiny of the Indian government. Spacing out donations might have been part of their plan to manage foreign contributions. However, it is still unclear to me why GFA held back so much money.

In any case, GFA raised millions and held it for several years all the while begging for funds. The next post will deal with that problem directly.

Next post: 4. The level of urgency communicated in GFA donor appeals contrasted with reserves held by foreign field partners and delays in sending funds to the field.

Gospel for Asia and Compliance with the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability’s Standards: The 2015 Letter

In K.P. Yohannan’s recent “exclusive personal response” to the fraud lawsuit settlement involving Gospel for Asia, Yohannan traces GFA’s problems to a “confidential letter from a financial standards association we were part of, and of which we were a charter member.” He said that the letter was put on social media to damage GFA. He added that a former staff member sent negative letters to donors.

Some of that is true and some is misleading. The letter Yohannan referred to came from the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability and was given to me by Gayle Erwin, a former GFA board member who served on the board for 30 years. Erwin had resigned from GFA’s board because of multiple problems he saw at GFA. He wanted to correct GFA’s public statements and believed the donor public would only know the truth if they had information. Erwin’s motive was to inform donors and set the record straight. If informing donors damages GFA, then GFA should consider the implications of that.

Yohannan also said a former staff member sent negative letters. In fact, a group of former staff members approached GFA’s board many months in advance of any public revelations. Long before I published my first blog post about GFA, former staff members approached GFA’s board with 5 concerns which they hoped could be resolved without public disclosure. In this newest statement, Yohannan presented the situation with former staff as though he was surprised by it. He should not have been. The situation had been brewing for months before anything came to light. You can read the concerns and history of the situation at GFADiaspora.com.

K.P. Yohannan said that the allegations were false. However, the board member he assigned to look into the matter — Gayle Erwin — found evidence for all but one of the five concerns. He later changed his view about the last concern and said he agreed with the former GFA staff on that point as well. Erwin also alleged in 2015 that Yohannan altered Erwin’s report to the GFA board to minimize the severity of Erwin’s findings. Those interested in comparing Yohannan’s statements now to former GFA board member Erwin’s documents and statements from 2015 can see them here. I also intend to post excerpts from Erwin’s report over the next several weeks.

For now, I want to respond to this part of Yohannan’s response:

Every year we evaluated our ministry and underwent an independent audit. In 2015, our governing board received a confidential letter from a financial standards association we were part of, and of which we were a charter member, pointing out that our accounting practices needed to better conform to the requirements set by that association. Despite the unique challenges our organization faces by supporting ministry in certain parts of the world, we immediately set out to comply with their request and hired a new auditing firm.

This paragraph appears to blame GFA’s former auditor Bland Garvey for the lack of adherence to ECFA’s financial standards. In fact, the ECFA didn’t specifically request that GFA change firms. The ECFA listed 17 items of concern; in two of them the ECFA listed problems with accounting practices. In one of them, GFA said they had already changed firms without a request from the ECFA. In fact, most of the matters related to financial practices within the control of GFA’s leadership.

To focus attention on matters of interest to the public which have been obscured by GFA’s response to the lawsuit, I am going to post segments of the ECFA compliance letter on the blog over the next month. Interested readers can read the entire letter by clicking this link. However, starting today, I will take each section in a post and highlight elements of what ECFA found. The reasons ECFA evicted charter member GFA weren’t limited to problems with the accounting firm. I will take them in order from the letter to K.P. Yohannan dated September 2, 2015:

The following is a summary of the most significant GFA compliance issues we reviewed:

1. Use of field-generated funds to satisfy designated foreign contributions. During our meeting on July 1, ECFA first learned that GFA and its field partners have engaged in a multi-year practice whereby field partners at least partially satisfied the designations on foreign contributions (primarily from U.S. donors, restricted for field use in India) by using locally generated field income (contributions from donors in India, profits from an India based rubber plantation, hospitals, etc.).

GFA staff indicated that the purpose of this practice was to retain foreign contributions in Indian Foreign Contribution (FC) accounts to earn a higher interest rate while expending locally generated funds that would not earn the higher interest rate. At this point, it is important to note that GFA disclaims that it exercises any control over field partners (see #10 below).

GFA staff also indicated that amounts in FC accounts would be used eventually for their original designation, as well, with the ultimate result that the purpose of the foreign contributions would be more than fulfilled.

To be clear, GFA solicited funds from donors, primarily gifts with donor restrictions, and transferred the funds to field partners in India, depositing them in FC accounts. While certain amounts were expended from the FC accounts in fulfillment of donor designations, significant amounts were retained in FC accounts over a period of years (see #2 below).

ECFA staff observed to GFA that it is not a normative practice to hold donor-restricted gifts and fulfill donor restrictions using other funds. Especially with respect to funds sent to international partners, it is extremely difficult for GFA to demonstrate that it has exercised appropriate control of the funds. Further, ECFA observed that this practice may not comply with ECFA Standard 7.2 because of the lack of clarity regarding the satisfaction of donor restrictions on gifts solicited by and given to GFA.

Our review of the board minutes did not indicate the GFA board had approved, or even been notified of, the practice of using field generated funds to satisfy restrictions on foreign contributions.

Subsequent to ECFA learning of this practice on July 1, GFA represented to ECFA that GFA’s field partners have ceased the practice of satisfying the designation on foreign contributions with field-generated funds.

GFA acknowledged using money from Indian for-profit ventures and Indian donors to fund activities which donors from the US thought they were funding. US funds were being placed in interest bearing accounts. One problem with this is that field partners might not use those foreign funds for the purposes designated. Some funds were held for many years while donors thought their donations had been spent to help evangelists or children. GFA couldn’t satisfy the ECFA that those funds had been used to satisfy donor intent. This was replicated in the fraud trial which led to the federal judge sanctioning GFA because they were unable to produce evidence about how the funds matched up with donor designations.

Next post: Excessive cash balances held in partner field accounts.

Compare Gospel for Asia’s Image with Reality

In 2019, Gospel for Asia is celebrating 40 years in business. This comes the same year GFA settled a fraud lawsuit (Murphy v. GFA) for $37-million. The settlement was just finalized with about 26,000 claimants seeking just over $109-million. Not everybody will get what they donated but this shows that donors weren’t happy.

On their Patheos blog, an unnamed staff member wrote a glowing vanity piece about GFA founder K.P. Yohannan. I would like readers to compare that piece with an email from David Carroll to Yohannan from 2015. This email came to light during discovery in Murphy v. GFA. At issue in the case was the use of donor funds. Plaintiffs Garland and Phyllis Murphy contended that GFA didn’t use all donor funds as donors intended. As a part of fund raising, GFA made representations that the funds were all going to mission work and were urgently needed. The discovery process pulled back the curtain on GFA’s claims and found that the reality wasn’t always what they claimed.

The narcissism in this article is obvious. The blog is GFA’s and the person writing it is an anonymous GFA staffer and yet readers are expected to take the following statements at face value:

They, and others like them, can look back and stand in awe of how an Almighty God has blessed their ministries abundantly and beyond imagination.

I know a man exactly like that. His name is Dr. K.P. Yohannan. He is one of the humblest and most dedicated men I have ever known. Forty years ago, he responded to God’s call to minister to the millions of people in Asia. Little did he know that in 2019 he would be able to look back at the remarkable things the Lord did over the past 40 years.

By any objective assessment, GFA has not had such a good record since 2014. The organization has been embroiled in scandal, membership in the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability was removed, they lost other symbols of financial integrity, they lost their registration as a charity in India, at least one of their schools in India closed due to financial problems, and they have to pay a $37-million settlement to donors. Yes, K.P. is a remarkable CEO.

Leaving aside the fact that GFA hasn’t had a great record of late, the picture presented is that GFA is taking all of that money using it to help the poor and needy. Since all of this is done for the Lord, surely there wouldn’t be any deception or double talk.

Now let’s pull back the curtain a bit.

In the fraud lawsuit, an email from Chief Operating Officer David Carroll to CEO K.P. Yohannan surfaced which presents a different picture. Here is the email.

Sir, I need to share with you where I am over this situation. I will try to summarize for brevity sake. We have a saying in our country: The numbers don’t lie. The published FC-6 reports show westerners that we have either sent money to the field raised for National Ministries and Bridge of Hope to fund the hospital and the corpus fund, or our FC-6 filings are filed wrong. Either way, this is a huge problem. It appears to those reading these that we might have been dishonest to the donors (fraud), or been dishonest to the Indian government, (a PR nightmare at least). Sister Siny’s report below will, in my opinion, do little to satisfy those who are printing out and analyzing our FC-6 reports. I am sorry for not expressing more confidence than this. I think we may have used money raised for National Ministries and Bridge of Hope for the hospital.

I think that India feels that we raise money and send it. I think that India feels that we raised money and sent it to them and they can legally use it any way they deem fit. I hope that I am wrong, but I am doubtful. I also don’t think that it is an intentional wrong, but if I am correct, it is a huge wrong. We’ve spoken at hundreds of churches with tears asking for the National Ministries and Bridge of Hope support, and the FC-6 that is public says that we sent much of that money for the hospital and the reserve corpus funds.”

“It doesn’t matter that we have now moved the money out of the corpus fund because according to the public FC-6 reports, we have been building them up for years. Moving the money only serves to confirm the feelings of guilt to outsiders.”

“I think the only way for us to handle the inquiries raised by Bruce and others is to refer them to our Indian office. Mr. Throckmorton (unless a miracle happens) will get this information and may even begin an investigation of us. We can say all we want that we don’t have anything to do with the Believers Church or the field and that you are only the
spiritual head of the church and that finances are handled by others but you, but as a practical matter, that will not hold up. Can the field find a way out of this situation? I too am very nervous. I have always believed in total accountability of the field, yet the FC-6 reports provide numbers that, as a former auditor, I cannot just explain away with a simple explanation. I, and the world, will need numerical proof now, and I do not have the ability to get it from the USA end. Only the field can explain it, and I am in the hot seat in this crisis and I feel a lot of pressure.

If I say, well, it is not my problem, it’s a field problem, it’s as good as saying we are guilty of misappropriation, If I say “The FC-6 reports are filed inaccurately on purpose, due to the hostile environments we work in, it gets the field in trouble and turns the attention to them. I get the feeling that, although we are not financially dishonest, we are financially reckless — the stockpiling of money in the RBC [Royal Bank of India] account
and then the hurried transferring of it to the field, the Hong Kong account, et cetera. Sir, may I please have my name taken off of the RBC account as soon as possible?”

There is much in this email which is inside baseball. One would need to follow this story closely to understand all of what Carroll is worried about. But note this: He is worried. He is worried because GFA was caught in misrepresentations and feared that Bruce Morrison from Canada and/or I would investigate the matter further to expose it all. And we did.

For the purpose of this post, I want to highlight one misrepresentation. K.P. Yohannan told people that he had nothing to do with finances in India, that he didn’t control anything financially there. However, here is what David Carroll said about that.

We can say all we want that we don’t have anything to do with the Believers Church or the field and that you are only the spiritual head of the church and that finances are handled by others but you, but as a practical matter, that will not hold up.

Yohannan told the the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability and his staff the story that he had no power over finances in India. However, in this email, David Carroll acknowledged that Yohannan’s story would “not hold up.” Click this link to hear the audio of the staff meeting in 2014 when he and Carroll told the staff about a $20-million gift from India which was used to complete the GFA headquarters in Wills Point, TX. The transcript can be read here.

Carroll could see there was a problem with donor funds going into a corpus fund (a kind of rainy day fund) and being spent on a medical center and other projects instead of on what donors intended. Yet, GFA was officially denying all of this. Eventually, the ECFA removed GFA from membership when these discrepancies could not be cleared up.

GFA still hasn’t admitted publicly that anything was ever wrong. They haven’t been readmitted to ECFA membership. They were sanctioned by a federal judge for delaying discovery during their fraud trial. There isn’t an indication that anything has changed. For all we know, reality is still much different from what they are presenting.

One aspect of the fraud case settlement which might serve to bring GFA into the light is the addition of two new board members to GFA’s board. Plaintiff Garland Murphy and an unnamed person will be added. Provided GFA honors the intent of the settlement, there may be some light at the end of this tunnel. For now, the public would do well to discern reality from image.

Questions for Superstar Francis Chan About Gospel for Asia

Francis Chan is a superstar pastor who has a franchise called Crazy Love™. There is a Crazy Love book, study guide, website, ministries (plural) and store where you can “shop now” for all of Chan’s books. Like all superstars, he also has a church planting network. We used to call them denominations. His is called We Are Church. He is pretty cool.

Anyway, he is also a board member of Gospel for Asia. That has always confused me because GFA hasn’t had such a cool recent history. But Francis Chan thinks everything is fine. In fact, he is out saying that GFA hasn’t done anything wrong, telling Christian Post that he researched the matter with a trusted friend and found nothing wrong with GFA’s finances.

I have written Francis Chan in the past and he first had his Crazy Love assistant Chaz answer me. When Chaz didn’t actually answer the question I asked, I wrote back but Crazy Love stopped responding.

In response to Francis Chan’s statement about GFA, I still have some questions. Maybe someone at We Are Church or Crazy Love will tell someone who will tell someone who can ask Francis Chan about it.

Dear Francis Chan:

One, if there were no financial problems at GFA, then why did Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability take the rare step of evicting the organization from membership? In case you didn’t read the report, you can read all about it here. Chaz can print out a copy for you.

Two, why did a federal judge appoint a special master to oversee GFA during Murphy v. GFA? I think you know the answer. GFA couldn’t verify their expenses and the judge had given the leaders months to do so. Being sanctioned by a federal judge isn’t a sign of an honest broker.

Three, why does His Eminence The Most Reverence Metropolitan Dr. K.P. Yohannan need to have a personal fortune when he is the supreme Metropolitan of Believers’ Church in Asia? You looked at his tax returns in the U.S. but did you consider the vast wealth of Believers’ Church in Asia? How does being the patron of a state of the art medical center and medical college in India figure into one’s empire? Why does the church need a soccer team? What needs or wants are not met when the church supplies everything due to your position as supreme temporal and spiritual authority?

Four, why did GFA cover up the transfer of $20-million from Canada to India to the U.S. for the completion of the Texas headquarters? I assume you’ve been to the compound. I hear it is pretty nice. You probably wouldn’t need a big income if you have everything you need provided for you by donors who think their money is going to evangelism and poor children in Asia.

Five, why hasn’t GFA told donors that Believers’ Church and GFA lost registration as a charity in India? When Compassion International lost their registration, it made the New York Times. When it happened to GFA, GFA told several different false stories. It still isn’t clear how funds are getting into India, if they are getting in at all.

I have more questions but that should do for now. As a board member, you will be busy meeting your two new colleagues, Garland Murphy and whoever he helps chose to take Gisela’s place. Also, you all are going to have to raise the $37-million for the settlement. Since a lien will be on the Texas headquarters, you will be really busy raising money to pay the $11-million you can’t get from “the field.” Probably, raising $11-million to pay a court settlement is really going to keep the board busy. Donors might be a little skeptical of an organization raising money to pay former donors who settled a RICO suit.

Crazy.

Love, The Blogger

P.S. In case you haven’t read the Murphy v. GFA settlement, it is here.

Was Gospel for Asia Vindicated by the RICO Settlement?

Reading the Gospel for Asia press release about the settlement of Murphy v. GFA (RICO lawsuit), one might think GFA came away vindicated. In the settlement document, GFA proclaimed their innocence and both parties agreed that all funds given by donors “to the field” went “to the field.”

Read the Murphy v. GFA Settlement

However, GFA still isn’t being transparent with the public on multiple counts. The “field” is a big place and just because funds get to Asia doesn’t mean they were spent as designated by donors. In the course of discovery, we learned that GFA interprets “the field” as being the banks where funds are deposited after they leave GFA in Texas. Yes, funds were sent to “the field” but that doesn’t mean donor intent was honored once those funds left Wills Point, TX. The plaintiffs did not stipulate to that, nor did the settlement document attest to that.

In the past, I have provided evidence that GFA has collected funds to send to Asia but used them for purposes other than intended by donors. A tax court in India also asserted the same thing. Then, there is the matter of $20-million which came back from Asia to help finance the Texas headquarters. Donors did not give $20-million to finance a compound in Wills Point, but at least some of those funds first went to the field before they came back to Texas for purposes other than what donors intended.

Furthermore, GFA still isn’t being transparent with donors about the charity registration situation in India. GFA and Believers Church in India lost their registration status in India and cannot directly take foreign contributions. No doubt GFA is sending funds to shell organizations in India but this flaunts the law there. I and others have repeatedly asked GFA how Bridge of Hope and flood relief funds are getting to Indian recipients, but they have given false answers. If GFA is actually going to try to get membership again in the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, the organizational leaders will have to be accountable to the public.

Although most of the GFA board remains intact, Garland Murphy and one more outsider will join the board soon. In addition, a subcommittee of the board –which does not include Yohannan or his son — will report to the federal judge for three years. All of this should make the board more transparent. When GFA will not answer questions or provide answers, I know two board members who will have no incentive to keep any secrets.

More than transparency, I hope the board becomes independent. The board will be required to learn about fiduciary responsibility and act accordingly. Given the precarious place K.P. Yohannan has taken GFA in recent years (loss of ECFA and NRB memberships, loss of recognition with federal government’s giving campaign, RICO lawsuit, etc.), I have to believe any reasonable board would have to look at his status as CEO. The track record isn’t good. Perhaps it is time for the board to act in the interest of GFA.

In short, GFA lives on but has not yet been vindicated.

Gospel for Asia Suing Insurance Company over Attorney Fees in RICO Case

Gospel for Asia has retained Locke Lord to defend them against the allegations of fraud by Garland and Phyllis Murphy. One of their attorneys is Harriet Miers, former White House counsel to President George W. Bush. Furthermore, GFA has to pay the costs of a Special Master since they were sanctioned by federal judge Timothy Brooks. No doubt the costs are high for all of that.

According to a suit filed by GFA in March, GFA’s leaders (K.P. Yohannan, David Carroll, Pat Emerick, etc.) hoped to recover those legal fees via an insurance claim with Philadelphia Indemnity Insurance Company. Although details are sealed, it appears the insurance company declined to fully pay GFA’s claim. Here is a brief statement of the dispute from a recent court document.

1.1 GFA Parties bring this action for Philadelphia’s breaches of its common law duty of good faith and fair dealing and the Texas Insurance Code for unfair settlement practices and for failing to promptly pay covered claims as a result of its wrongful denials and/or wrongful delays in providing defenses in lawsuits against them.

1.2. Philadelphia denies that any reasonable defense fees or expenses remain unpaid and contends that, accordingly, this case should be dismissed. Additionally, Philadelphia denies that it breached its common law duty of good faith and fair dealing or the Texas Insurance Code. Philadelphia contends that it had a reasonable basis for the coverage positions that it has taken and liability was not reasonably clear.

For more detail, see GFA’s original petition.

One crucial court document is sealed and Philadelphia Insurance declined to speak to me. In plain language, it appears that the insurance company has found a reason why they believe they are not liable to pay the claim GFA made. It may be that Locke Lord’s fees are beyond reasonable or that Philadelphia believes GFA is at fault in some way. In any case, the trial is to be by jury in late 2019, probably after the RICO trial.

GFA and Lawsuits

For a Christian ministry, GFA here and abroad, is involved in many legal battles. Aside from the RICO suit, and now the action against their insurance company, GFA has sued the Church of South India for defamation. Back in 2015, GFA threatened Patheos with legal action when I published audio of a staff meeting. I wonder how many donor designate their funds for the legal defense fund.

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Image Fair use, GFA Facebook page