Dirty dealings - by Richard... Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Dirty dealings - by Richard... Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Devil's Kitchen is on the trail of Actis and Dr Pachauri's funny money. Birds of a feather, it seems, flock together.

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Great minds? - by Richard...

The Foreign Policy magazine ranks the "top 100 global thinkers" of the year, putting Rajendra Pachauri in fifth place – for ending the debate over whether climate change matters.

He beats Bill and Hillary Clinton, who share sixth place. President Obama is placed second – which really tells you all you need to know.

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Pachauri: TERI-Europe - the enigma (Part 1) - by Richard...

Part of the great global empire controlled by Dr Rajendra Pachauri is an organisation called TERI-Europe. And, like everything to do with Dr Pachauri, it is not quite what it seems, apparently enjoying a flood of grant-funded work, yet living off thin air.

Everything about the organisation is shrouded in mystery and even the most straightforward of details raise serious questions about its operations. For instance, the organisation was incorporated on 10th June 1999, its articles then amended by special resolution dated 2 September 1999. But, although it is registered as a charity, it seems to be running an accumulated deficit over the last five years. 

In its year ending 30 June 2004, it reported an income of £21,286 yet showed an expenditure of £35,403. The following year, it attracted a paltry £456 yet still managed to spend £24,379. For the next two years, it took in £7,000 and £9,000 respectively, spending £8,100 and then £5,000. In its year ending 30 June 2008, it made £8,000 and spent £3,000. Grossing just over £45,000 in the period, that left it short by about £30,000.

Nevertheless, this "charity" is also registered as a company, and it tells the Company Registrar that it has a healthy cash balance, currently listing its cash assets as £63,000, which happens also to be the "capital employed" by its two directors. One, rather predictably, is Dr Rajendra Kumar Pachauri – who gives his address as 160 Golf Links, New Delhi.

But we also have a new (to us) character on the scene. She is Ritu Kumar (pictured), the second of TERI-Europe's two directors. Kumar describes herself as an "environmental economist". She is also the company secretary.

The next strange - very strange - fact is that you might expect this hub of empire to be registered at a prestigious central London address - in common with the Washington office. Instead, it is located in an unprepossessing Edwardian detached residential house, deep in suburban Merton on the fringes of South London. This, Ritu Kumar also gives as her address - 27 Albert Grove, London, SW20 8PZ (pictured, below right).

That she gives it as her address is unsurprising. She is what the Land Registry describes as the "proprietor", along with a certain Nicholas Vivian James Robins, who also gives this as his address. The property was purchased for £215,000 on 15 April 1999 - two months before TERI-Europe was incorporated - with a mortgage from the Nationwide Building Society. But this was paid off on 28 September 2001, when Kumar and Robins assumed "title absolute", becoming the legal owners of the property. We will have a closer look at Robins later.

To add to the mystery, there is no mention of company directors in the official TERI-Europe website, which claims that the organisation was "set up by TERI India". This it clearly was not. But Pachauri is not listed as a director - only as a "trustee", along with a galaxy of notables, including Sir John Houghton and Sir Crispin Tickell - who would hardly be seen dead in Merton. 

Ritu Kumar, just as strangely, is not identified as a director either - much less as the Secretary of the company. She is mentioned only as a "contact" - with the Albert Grove address and a TERI-India e-mail. 

There is also another "contact", a lady called Rochelle Mortier. She has a very interesting cv>, currently working for Alexander Ballard Ltd, an environmental consultancy, via Cargill, Coopers & Lybrand and Price Waterhouse and Greenpeace - as well as TERI-Europe.

What all makes this so very mysterious is that, despite the incredibly low level of trading, TERI-Europe seems to be able to afford the services of the likes of Mortier, to say nothing of Ritu Kumar, who rather hides her light under a bushel, as far as the TERI-Europe website goes. Furthermore, she seems to have several different versions of her cv.

One of the more interesting of these makes it clear that we are dealing withDr Ritu Kumar, described as "one of India's topmost environmental economists, experienced in issues related to sustainable production, trade, and climate change." We are also told that she is currently Director of TERI-Europe and Executive Director of the Sustainable Trade and Innovation Centre (STIC).

Initially government-funded (by the Dutch), STIC is another of those interesting NGOs, with a lot of detail here. In the brochure other funding partners are identified: the Commonwealth Science Council (CSC), UK, the European Partners for the Environment (EPE), Brussels, and the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), Amsterdam.

Kumar is then identified as the representative of the Commonwealth Science Council, giving her address as 27 Albert Grove. In another instance, however, she gives a slightly more prestigious address: Commonwealth Secretariat, Marlborough House, Pall Mall.

In a book to which she contributes, edited by Cary Krosinsky and her housemate Nick Robins, called Sustainable Investing, Kumar offers a slightly different version of her cv. Here, we are told that from 2000 to 2006 she was director, UK, with TERI-Europe. That - insofar as it implies that she no longer worked for TERI-Europe after 2006 - clearly is not true. All the official records – and much else – have her currently still a director.

But this cv has Dr Kumar from 2006 as a senior adviser on environmental, social and governance issues with Actis UK - a private equity firm investing primarily in Africa, China, India, Latin America, South and South East Asia. She has advised on "environmental, social and business integrity since 2006." The company handles $7.3 billion in investments and has over 100 investment professionals in nine offices worldwide.

Thus far then, with a great deal more to cover in what becomes an increasingly murky story, we have a charity which is a company wholly owned by Dr Pachauri and Dr Kumar, the latter who not only works for TERI-Europe but also for a government-funded NGO, the Commonwealth Secretariat and a private equity company handling billions in investment funds - aided by another "part-timer" working for another company.

Interestingly, much of TERI-Europe's activities are devoted to encouraging Indian corporates to be more "transparent". As we will see in the next part, though, this does not apply to TERI-Europe. The plot is about to get very much thicker.

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Pachauri: hidden subsidies - by Richard... Tuesday, December 29, 2009

While British schools are scraping together their pennies in anticipation of funding cuts, hard-pressed taxpayers and parents will undoubtedly be pleased to learn that they are subsidising Indian education, to the tune of £1 million through a project called the UKIERI programme.

This is described as a "five-year roll-out of networked partnerships" between UK and India schools, funded by the FCO, the DCSF (Department of Children, Schools and Families), the British Council and the Office of Science and Technology. 

Although ostensibly directed as schools, however, the small-print tells you that the bulk of the funding goes to the HE (Higher Education) sector. Two principal activities, we are told, will be promoting research partnerships between centres of excellence in sciences/social sciences. A priority is to encourage more doctorate and post-doctorate collaboration between India and UK, through split PhDs or research fellowships.

It will this come as no surprise to learn that a major beneficiary of the programme is TERI University (pictured), the chancellor of which just happens to be Dr R K Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC and director general of TERI.

Thus, in October of this year, the "university" was able to offer a PhD position "in the area of catalysis." This is partly funded by UKIERI (UK-India Education and Research Initiative) and the research is to be carried out in collaboration with Department of Chemistry, University of Glasgow.

Whether the work should qualify for a PhD, though, is an interesting issue, as it has been well and truly explored by numerous authors and was the subject of a paper by TERI itself inNovember 2007.

Only a few months later in January 2008, though, TERI (director-general RK Pachauri) – but not TERI University – was able to announce the funding of a project on "Red mud catalyst for hydrocarbon cracking and carbon adsorbent production." Its sponsor was declared as: "UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) ".

Original work or not, the outcome – if successful – is likely to have considerable commercial value, along the lines of Pachauri's OBTL venture. Thus, rather than primarily an educational exercise, this looks more like a cross-subsidy for another of Dr Pachauri's money-making enterprises. 

British taxpayers will be so pleased.

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Ice not fire - by Richard...

"I have to marvel at the irony of all this, and the fact that such stinging cold, and for too many people, lethal, is a product of a world that has simply bought into those that sought to take advantage of them to advance their own agenda. Fortunately, cooler minds (weather patterns) are going to prevail in time to force people to wake up to the idea that this is not a done deal, and far from it, as is my opinion, ICE not fire may be the bigger worry for causing hardship on the planet's life by 2030. 

They will have no one to blame but themselves, as they built the road that will ride their idea to its death, one that may not deserve to die, but will."

Joe Bastardi on his blog.

"Elevating any person, or model, to something that you put blind faith in the face of the majesty that is the Earth, and all that surrounds it, has a word – Foolishness," he writes.

CLIMATE CHANGE – NEW THREAD

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Pachauri and Big Oil - by Richard...

The Indian company, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC), is ranked 152nd in the Fortune Global 500 list of companies. It contributes 77 percent of India's crude oil production and 81 percent of India's natural gas production. 

The Indian government holds 74.14 percent equity stake in this company which, in the financial year ending 2009, achieved its highest-ever sales revenue of £8.6 billion.

And, for the period of June 2006 to June 2009 it had the good fortune to have as one of its non-executive directors a certain Dr R K Pachauri, also director general of TERI and chairman of the IPCC.

When it comes to "Big Oil", there are bigger but ONGC certainly qualifies as a member of this club. And at the heart of the beast for three years, at a crucial point in the development of the IPCC agenda, was Dr Pachauri.

During that time, though, no one could accuse the good doctor of getting rich out of the deal – not directly at any rate. The company paid its non-executive directors a modest attendance fee only. And for the two years of 2007-08 and 2008-09, such was his pitiful attendance record that he netted only just over £2,000.

However, Dr Pachauri is nothing if not good at multi-tasking and networking. And, while diligently looking after the interests of ONGC he was, of course, looking after his own, setting up an offshoot of his institute TERI as a separate company called TERI-Biotech.

This company had developed a patented process for the biodegradation of oil, which could be used for extending the productivity of oil wells and for cleaning up oil spills. And its first – and main – client became ONGC, which allowed it to test and refine its process.

So successful was the association, we are told, that the two companies, TERI-Biotech and ONGC decided to formalise the relationship, forming on 26 March 2007 a joint venture company called ONGC TERI Biotech Ltd (OTBL). TERI – director general Dr R K Pachauri – holds 47 percent of the equity, while ONGC has 49 percent. The remaining 2 percent is held by financial institutions.

Needless to say, the financial contribution to Dr Pachauri's evident wealth has not been recorded, but his continued partnership with "Big Oil" is now set to yield dividends. Reported in April 2009, two months before Pachauri stepped down from the main board of ONGC, the joint venture company had decided to bid for a share of a $3bn UN-funded contract to clean up the oil pollution in Kuwait, left behind by Saddam's invasion.

That Pachauri just happens to be a senior official of a UN institution is, of course, a complete coincidence. But his joint company seems remarkably confident of getting a sizeable slice of the work, so much so that it was telling the Indian financial press that it has "a plan to clock a top line of $2.1 billion in the next three to four years." 

One can only wish the enterprising Dr Pachauri the best of luck in his venture, but it should be recorded that, while the likes of George Monbiot are quick to associate "climate deniers" with Big Oil, no one is actually closer than his all-time hero, Dr R K Pachauri.

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A conspiracy of interests - by Richard... Monday, December 28, 2009

Do environmental journalists sing to the same hymn sheet? Biased BBC offers some evidence to that effect. When you also get BBC journalists such as Nik Gowing involved climate change conferences as paid moderators, you begin to get the picture.

CLIMATE CHANGE – NEW THREAD