Pachauri: TERI-Europe – the enigma (Part 3) - by Richard... Saturday, January 02, 2010

Pachauri: TERI-Europe – the enigma (Part 3) - by Richard... Saturday, January 02, 2010

Al Capone was never prosecuted for his major league crimes – to get him jail the Feds did him for tax evasion. Much the same thinking is behind the pursuit of Pachauri's outpost of empire, TERI-Europe.

Located in London, this is the one part of his empire which comes under UK jurisdiction, where the Charities and Companies Acts apply, in a situation where there is a very strong smell of malpractice – to put it mildly.

A more pointed assessment might veer towards the supposition that this is a "front" organisation, its primary purpose being to launder a substantial flow of funds to other recipients, with minimum scrutiny and accountability.

That the accounts of the charity (pictured left - click to enlarge) don't stack up is already evident from our previous piece, but we need a great deal more before we have a strong enough case to put to the Charity Commission by way of a formal complaint – which is the eventual intention.

What I am doing, therefore – slowly and laboriously – is going through the tedious process of building a picture of TERI-Europe's activities and scale of operations, seeking to demonstrate that they far exceed anything that could possibly be covered by the income and expenditures declared to the Charity Commissioner.

If this can be made to stick, Pachauri, his fellow trustees and his co-director – Ritu Kumar – could be in very serious trouble.

What could help us on our way is a lead which came via our forum, identifying a payment from the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) intended for TERI-Europe, but which does not seem to have found its way into its accounts.

Even without that, there are several odd things about this payment. To the value of £30,417, it is intended "to provide funding to TERI Europe to cover salary and travel cost of the head of unit responsible to produce a Synthesis Report of the IPCC AR4."

Working backwards, the main person responsible for this task, to which this funding applies, can only be Dr R K Pachauri. Yet the proposition that he should be paid salary and travel costs by DEFRA, when as head of the IPCC his costs are already covered and his salary is paid by this agency, seems bizarre.

Even stranger is the proposition that the money is being allocated not to the IPCC but to TERI Europe, which has no locus and no responsibilities for the Synthesis Report. It is Dr Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, not Dr Pachauri, director general of TERI and trustee/director of TERI-Europe who is doing the work.

Yet another strange thing is that, although the money is allocated to TERI-Europe, DEFRA pays it to Cambridge University. One assumes the university is dealing with this as a project "managed on behalf of Defra by the Contractor/Funded Organisation selected." But DEFRA has not been slow to throw money at TERI-Europe in the past, so why it could not send the cheque direct this time is not explained.

Howsoever, these are but details compared with the main event. What we have here is hard evidence of a payment of £30,417 – less the university's cut – allocated to TERI-Europe. The detail is quite explicit there: "to provide funding to TERI Europe ... ". What we also have is the payment period, which is "from 2006 to 2007". The sum will thus fall either within the 2005-6 accounting period, 2006-7 or even, possibly, 2007-8.

Even if the sum was split between all three accounting periods, though, there are problems. Respectively, £7,000, £9,000 and £8,000 are declared as income – totalling £24,000. This is less than the sum paid by DEFRA. Even if DEFRA had been the only source of income in the period (and we know it was not - there was that "generous support" of the Global Opportunities Fund of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office) it cannot be the case that the sum has been declared.

One can only speculate where the money did go, but that is not the issue here. On the face of it, TERI-Europe seems to be in clear breach of the statutory accounting rules applying to charities. And that is a criminal offence.

What sort of audit trail there is back from DEFRA might also be relevant. If there has been an improper payment, it should know about it. But there is something very strange about the British government when it comes to Pachauri's outfits. It seems to have a strange urge to throw taxpayers' money at them.

Thus we learn that, earlier this year minister for International development Douglas Alexander launched a partnership with TERI-India, pledging up to £10 million to support the work of TERI over the next five years.

Amongst other thing, the money would enable TERI "to focus on building its own institutional capacity, helping it to become an even stronger organisation than it is already." Dr R K Pachauri was very pleased. And after he had offered his ritual comments about the "removal of poverty", he no doubt retired to his multi-million dollar home at 160 Golf Links – further then to consider the plight of the poor.

If he were asked what had happened to the £30,417 paid to him, he probably would not remember. Pocket-change sums like that are so easy to forget. We trust, though, that the Charity Commissioner will be less than impressed.

PACHAURI THREAD

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Pachauri: TERI-Europe – the enigma (Part 2) - by Richard... Friday, January 01, 2010

Although – as we recorded in our earlier post - Dr Pachauri's European outpost, TERI-Europe, was formally set up on 10 June 1999, it was not officially launched until 25 January 2000. For that grand event, its suburban home at 27 Albert Grove, in the London Borough of Merton, could hardly have sufficed.

Through the good offices of Ritu Kumar, director and company secretary of TERI-Europe, however, there was a more than adequate alternative. Using her position in the Commonwealth Secretariat, she was able borrow the premises of her additional employer, the very splendid setting of Marlborough House.

And for such an occasion, the chief guest had to be a person of some substance and it says something for the pulling power of this obscure charity that its was able to attract the Rt Hon Mr John Prescott, then deputy prime minister. Whether Dr R K Pachauri was present at the event is not recorded.

From such an auspicious start, Pauchauri's new outpost of Empire went on to attract an impressive array of projects and partners, proudly listed on its own website.

Foremost amongst these, it parades a project which it describes as SI2 - Sustainable Investment in India, which culminated in a report, published under the TERI-Europe brand, in May 2007. This 50-page document, stacked with detail, was entitled: "Sustainable development of portfolio investment in India's publicly listed companies."

The report is interesting for many reasons, not least because the primary author was Ritu Kumar, who must have spent many hours researching and writing it. Then there must have been the costs of design and typesetting, plus the printing and distribution costs.

Yet, in the year of production – TERI-Europe's financial year ending on 20 June – the organisationtold the Charity Commission that its income had been a paltry £9,000 and that its expenditure had been a mere £5,000.

If Ritu Kumar had been paid for her work, it cannot have been very much, and the document on top of that must have been remarkably cheap to produce.

It is also remarkable that, whatever were the incidental costs - such as the telephoning Ritu Kumar must have done, her stationery costs and her office sundries - those plus whatever salary she might have been paid and all the other expenses that TERI-Europe carried that year, came to such an exact figure of £5,000.

This, then, points to a profound suspicion about the operation. That it should have declared an income of only £9,000 and a lesser amount for expenses for its financial year ending 30 June had a particular advantage, viz à viz the Charity Commission. Falling below the £10,000 threshold on turnover, this meant it did not have to publish either its accounts or its annual report. Its affairs could be kept away from the prying eyes of the casual public.

The report, incidentally, was co-authored by a certain Dan Siddy. This gentleman is the founder and director of an outfit called Delsus Limited, a "specialist consulting and advisory services for sustainable finance and investment in developing countries and transitional economies", started in 2006.

An issue here is that the report was not a co-production by TERI-Europe and Delsus. It was very much a TERI-branded product. Therefore, his substantial input must have been by way of a donation to TERI – something, of course, Siddy was perfectly entitled to do. And his time would not come cheap.

However, the Charity Commission rules are very clear on the way such donations should be treated. It states that such "incoming resources" should be included in the statement of financial activities, valued at the price the charity estimates it would pay in the open market for such a service.

Thus, we have a situation where the cash equivalent of Siddy's "donation" comes – presumably – within the £9,000 declared income for TERI-Europe in that year.

That, though, is by no means the whole of it as this enterprise was produced with the "generous support" of the Global Opportunities Fund of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. This "support" was announced in April 2006 would, presumably have become payable in the financial year ending June 2007 – all part of the £9,000 income that TERI-Europe declared to the Charity Commission.

If it was included within the £9,000 declared income, the support cannot have been all that generous as the project also had to fund the services of an "Advisory Group". Surprisingly enough, one prominent member was Nick Robins, cited as Henderson Global Investors. No mention is made if his being Ritu Kumar's housemate and co-owner, with her, of 27 Albert Grove, head office of TERI-Europe.

Other members of the Advisory Group were David Gait (First State), Stephen Hine (Eiris), Nandan Maluste (Kotak Mahindra Bank), Ravi Narain (National Stock Exchange) and Suresh Narayan (India Index Services Limited). Then, TERI-Europe had the services of Rochelle Mortier for "initial research in India and UK", plus Rachel Mew of Delsus Limited, and the staff of the Publications Unit at TERI India. All of this, it seems, was funded within that incredibly modest total expenditure for the year of £5,000 - unless, of course, all these services were donated, in which case they must have come within the £9,000 income.

And this was but one project for that year, and there were other years with other projects, again where the income and expenditure was remarkably modest. We will look at some of these in the next part.

PACHAURI THREAD

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.

Pachauri: friends of friends - by Richard... Wednesday, December 30, 2009

In a small step sideways from looking at TERI-Europe, we need to pick up a few loose ends before progressing the story.

We thus return to Ritu Kumar, whom we met in an earlier piece. She has it seems a taste for directorships, and is turning out to be a past master at multi-tasking.

It is not enough for this lady that she should be a director and company secretary of Pachauri's little enterprise, TERI-Europe, the Executive Director of the Sustainable Trade and Innovation Centre (STIC), a consultant to the Commonwealth Science Council and a senior adviser for Actis UK.

For the idle moments in her otherwise busy life, she as acquired another directorship, this time of a company called Investor Watch, formed on 27 April 2009. Her co-directors are Cary Krosinsky and Mark A Campanale, the latter being responsible for company research on the Jupiter Merlin Ecology Fund, the Merlin International Green Investment Trust PLC and the Skandia Ethical Selection Fund at Jupiter Tyndall Merlin.

Having placed the marker, we will return to these two gentlemen and their shared enterprise in due course. Both have very interesting links into the green movement. But we need also to look briefly at another of Kumar's co-directors of this newly-formed company, none other than Nicholas Vivian James Robins (pictured).

It is he, we ascertained in our previous piece, shares ownership of 27 Albert Grove with Ritu Kumar, the rather unlikely registered office of Pachauri's TERI-Europe. Both give this address as their residence.

Amongst his other activities, he is a leading light in the Network for Sustainable Financial Marketsbut his current paying day-job is director of the HSBC's Climate Change Centre of Excellence, which he joined in late 2007.

He started off his career with the Economist Intelligence Unit, moved to the EU Commission's Environmental Directorate and thence to the Business Council for Sustainable Development. From there moved to the International Institute for Environment and Development, before ending up with Henderson Global Investors, where he was head of SRI (Socially Responsible Investing) funds prior to joining HSBC.

If this is an interesting snapshot of a green activist pursuing his career path, what Robins does not reveal in his general cv (apart from the fact that he is living in the "head office" of TERI-Europe, prop. R K Pachauri) is that he is an active member of the Green Party - and has recently been a generous donor, contributing £5,500 to the party coffers. Moreover, he stood for electionas a councillor in the 2006 local elections in his home area, the London Borough of Merton.

Here, strangely, there is a link with TERI, because TERI-Europe claims as one of its "partners" the London Borough of Merton which it assisted in "organizing a major seminar on energy efficiency and in incorporating renewable energy technologies in building design."

Why a suburban London Borough should need the help of the European arm of an Indian "think tank" is not explained. Even less so is why the seminar was funded by the European Union under its €42.3 million "Asia Urbs " project. However, as first sight, this looks to be a mechanism for channelling EU funds into TERI. Was Robins involved?

Whether there was a link, there is certainly a more tangible association between Robins's employer, HSBC, and an offshoot of TERI-India known as the TERI Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD). In partnership with this organisation, the HSBC proudly sponsors the Living Business SME Award.

Whether there is link between Robins and this award, again is not stated, but HSBC have certainly benefitted from their sponsorship. On 5 February 2009 at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit, Naina Lal Kidwai, Group General Manager and Country Head, HSBC India, was presented by Dr R K Pachuri with the "prestigious" Green Globe Award in the business enterprise category "for her commitment to environment sustainability".

Sponsored by the newly-formed Green Global Foundation, the initiative of the Indian Film Academy and Wizcraft International Entertainment, UNEP and TERI, headed by R K Pachauri, are the partners of the foundation.

Friends of R K Pachauri, it seems, tend to do rather well out of their association with the man.

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 in November 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.

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.