The 'anomalies’ of Dr Rajendra Pachauri’s charity accounts

An absolutely fascinating piece by Christopher Booker in the Sunday Telegraph about the beleagured Dr Rajendra Pachauris. You must read the whole piece because the BBC will not report such inconvenient truths. Here's an extract or three:

'Last winter, Dr Pachauri’s reputation took a hammering. On the one hand, there was the exposure of all those glaring and alarmist scientific errors in the IPCC’s last major report, produced under his guidance in 2007. On the other was the revelation in this newspaper of how his prestige as the “world’s top climate official” had coincided with a massive expansion in the fortunes of Teri, his Delhi-based research institute. Not only had Pachauri been appointed as an adviser to some of the richest banks and investment funds in the world, but Teri’s empire had mushroomed to include branches in Europe, North America, Dubai, Japan and South-East Asia.

...

When Dr Richard North and I came to examine this empire, our interest was drawn to Teri Europe, based in a suburban house in south London, which is registered under British law as a charity and is obliged to publish its accounts on the Charity Commission website. When we looked at these, however, they seemed rather odd. The figures showed the charity’s income and expenditure rising steadily in its early years – but from 2006 onwards they suddenly plunged to below £10,000 a year.

This was significant because £10,000 is the threshold below which a charity does not have to publish full accounts. Yet we knew that in these years Teri Europe was rapidly expanding, receiving sums way above that threshold. These included several payments from the UK government, such as £30,000 for the services of an employee of Dr Pachauri’s Delhi office to act as his co-editor on the IPCC’s 2007 Synthesis Report.

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Since it seemed that both Teri Europe and the trustees were in serious breach of the Charity Commission’s rules, this has led over recent months to a protracted series of exchanges with the commission.

First, the names of Houghton and Tickell swiftly disappeared from the list of trustees. Then, in May, after an audit by a firm of accountants, the commission’s website showed dramatically revised figures for one of the three years in question. The charity’s income for 2008 had now risen from £8,000 to £103,980, its expenditure from £3,000 to £97,419. But the figures for the previous two years were unchanged. The commission explained that it had allowed this “to save the charity a considerable amount in accounting fees”. It also claimed that the errors were due to the charity’s “inexperience in preparing accounts”, though the figures for earlier years showed no sign of “inexperience”. '

If true, the facts uncovered by Christopher Booker deserve wider exposure.