Also See:
KFT Mismanagement Report: https://www.rezamusic.com/writings/on-j-krishnamurtis-work/KFT-Mismanagement
A former Krishnamurti Foundation Trust (KFT) manager filed a major 346 page formal complaint against KFT with the Charity Commission on the behalf of our activist taskforce on 19 December 2022. An updated version was filed on 9 January 2023.
Read this and weep Derek Hook, Wendy Smith, Gary Primrose, Raman Patel, Nasser Shamim, Mina Masoumian, Bill Taylor, Antonio Autor, Friedrich Grohe. Look what mess you made out of Krishnamurti's beloved KFT/Brockwood: https://www.rezamusic.com/writings/on-j-krishnamurtis-work/KFT-Mismanagement
The cover letter that contained the body of the complaint is as follows. It is 19 pages including two appendices, and the third appendix is the investigative report: https://www.rezamusic.com/writings/on-j-krishnamurtis-work/KFT-Mismanagement
[Updated Version 9 January 2023 to replace version submitted on 19 December 2022 to include new conflict of interest information we received about Trustee Gary Primrose obtaining money from Friedrich Grohe & Gang]
9 January 2023
From:
<> and team of deeply concerned friends of the founder of the Trust, former donors, trustees, staff, students, volunteers, etc.
To:
Charity Commission, PO Box 211, Bootle, L20 7YX, UK, 0300 066 9197
https://forms.charitycommission.gov.uk/raising-concerns/
Complaint Against Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Limited (KFT) / Brockwood Park School, Bramdean, Alresford, Hampshire, SO24 0LQ, UK
330+ Page Evidence Document Attached As Appendix 3.
· KFT Charity Registration No. 312865 (England and Wales)
· KFT Company Registration No. 1055588 (England and Wales)
· [Previously] Brockwood Park Krishnamurti Educational Centre Ltd. Co. 01055539
Dear Sir or Madam
I am filing this complaint about the Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Limited (KFA, “Trust”) and its activity, Brockwood Park School on behalf of myself (a former manager at the Trust for) and our team of stakeholders including current or former trustees, donors, staff, students, teachers, parents, and close friends of the late founder of the Trust, Mr. J. Krishnamurti. We are extremely concerned about the deep-rooted governance issues and mismanagement of the Trust and its management of Brockwood Park School.
Based on our diligent investigation we believe it’s necessary for three trustees to be replaced at the Trust, i.e., Derek Hook, Wendy Smith, Gary Primrose. We have highly qualified candidates to propose who are ready to hit the ground running.
We have carried an extensive research of the Trust for the past two years and the following are based on our findings during that period. We came upon many important realizations based on the consistent testimonies of tens of people we spoke with and we even got to the root causes of certain acts of mismanagement which the Trust worked hard at covering up.
Aside from superficial changes, we have no reason to believe the problems we’ve identified have been remedied. The Trust has categorically denied all the issues we identified through statements of over 70 witnesses. As an overview, please note the following, evidence for which is set out in Appendix 3:
· The Trust has viciously engaged in bullying and intimidating critics, and even firing people who spoke up, and even intentionally making false statements to the police when the Trust decided to abuse the police power to quash criticism. Such misuse of police power is apparently an abuse of the Trust’s tax-exempt status since the police is funded by tax payers.
· A couple of wealthy individuals, i.e., Friedrich Grohe and current trustee Derek Hook, have gained an inappropriate level of influence at the Trust, which has caused tremendous problems as illustrated herein. The list of their influences is long, but as just one example, Grohe’s employee is now the Executive Director of the Trust and he’s absolutely unqualified for the role, in our opinion. Hook’s business partner is the Chair of Board of Trustees. A weak Board has failed its duties to tame the influence mongering and has even participated in it.
· The Board of Trustees have allegedly caused tremendous damage to the Trust by gross mismanagement, misconduct, mistreatment of staff, and failing their duties such as safeguarding and oversight. We raised fourteen issues with them prior to filing this complaint but they totally failed to address any of the issues we raised, and in order to defend themselves in response to our scrutiny, they’ve taken a scattered gun approach, from threatening to sue us if we filed with the Charity Commission, to trying to intimidate us by making false allegations against us via their lawyer who stopped representing them after we demanded that she substantiates her false allegations with any evidence – to lying about our lead investigator in order to justify not wanting to meet us to discuss the issues – and filing dishonest bogus police complaints against our lead investigator, which caused an embarrassing backlash for the Trust because it failed to produce evidence to support its dishonest claims.
· The Trust has given into excessive and inappropriate level of influence by a large donor, Friedrich Grohe “Grohe” who has given personal perks (cash gifts, paid vacations abroad, etc.) to several insiders over the years, including donating to trustee Gary Primrose’s certain project, and has gained an inappropriate level of influence at the Trust. He even paid people at some point to write nasty letters to the Board when Grohe was trying to oust a school director! Grohe’s influence mongering is unquestionable. And a weak Board of Trustees have supported him every step of the way.
· Grohe’s “Gang” as they call themselves have enjoyed the clout of being on his payroll, in order to intervene in the business of the Trust, from recruiting key people to top posts, to being engaged in most critical decisions without having an official role. One of their several disaster recruitments is Mina Masoumian who became the most powerful person at the School run by the Trust, without having any prior education or experience in pedagogy, school administration, safeguarding, pastoral care; and the result was disastrous as so many witnesses have testified (see Appendix 3).
· Employee of Grohe and member of his Gang, Raman Patel, held no official duty at the Trust for a long time yet was viewed by many witnesses as the most powerful person at the Trust. Using Grohe’s clout, in conjunction with others like Bill Taylor and Antonio Autor who were and still are to a large degree, part of the top management team, allegedly exerted undue and inappropriate influence at the Trust to carry objectives of Grohe and his gang, e.g., recruitment of Nasser Shamim and his aforementioned wife, who became utmost powerful persons at the Trust and engaged in very troubling conduct that left many former trustees, supporters, staff, students, parents, donors, very alienated. Many troubling accounts of how people were mistreated appear in Appendix 3.
· The recruitments done by the Grohe Gang were allegedly and apparently largely done without proper vetting by the Board of Trustees who appeared submissive and overshadowed by Grohe Gang’s political and financial clout. This was one of the many huge failures of the trustees.
· Appendix 3 illustrates numerous failures of the Trustees including their mismanagement that led to the collapse of the Trust’s primary school Inwoods. The Trust’s irresponsible, incompetent, mismanaged way of firing of the head of Inwoods and the Trust’s associated public relations gaffs, resulted in 93% of the students leaving the school, while the Trust incompetently believed it things will go on as normal after they gutted out the school in a most vicious, dishonest way that left numerous students, parents, staff, supporters, volunteers shattered.
· Trustees failed to appoint two Executive Directors based on qualifications, and instead appointed Nasser Shamim, and then Raman Patel who appeared to be unqualified for the role. Shamim was brought to the Trust by Patel who is part of the Grohe Gang. Patel has had inappropriate influence at the Trust and potential conflict of interest being on the payroll of Grohe whom many witnesses believe have had more influence at the Trust than the trustees. Patel was known as the most powerful person at the Trust even when he did not hold any official role, because he is part of the Grohe Gang who’s had inappropriate level of influence at the Trust. Patel took over as Executive Director a face-saving action, after our research revealed the degree of mismanagement and inappropriate actions of the former Executive Director, Nasser Shamim, whom Grohe/Patel had brought in to the Trust and supported him finding his way to ultimate power. Numerous witnesses paint a consistent and bleak picture of Shamim’s mismanagement in Appendix 3. Patel’s appointment to Executive Director was also a face-saving move for the Trustees who had failed to properly vet, manage, oversee Shamim who carried out inappropriate acts that led to much alienation, discord, chaos, and publicity damage.
· The Trust used excessive and allegedly abusive NDAs while it allegedly bullied fragile staff into signing releases while allegedly threatening them with withholding of their severance pay, and accusing them with fake, fabricated gross misconduct the Trust was never able to prove. See Appendix 3 for details.
· Large donor, Grohe has given many perks to some trustees and/or management over the years, including large cash gifts, fully paid holidays abroad , etc., which have allegedly compromised their independence – and Grohe has even had his people on the grounds at the Trust, without an official role, exerting influence which have been detrimental for the Trust.
· Many witnesses have stated that the Board of Trustees is weak. Witnesses have indicated the Board mostly rubber stamps decisions made outside the Board, and is allegedly often under the management’s thumb who tightly control communications with the Board and are reportedly even involved in vetting new prospective trustees to make sure they are submissive to them. This level of management power is a failure of the trustees.
· The Board of Trustees is not independent and impartial, and center of power is apparently not the Board but with a large outside donor, his employees and an internal group known as “Old Boys” comprised some members of management closely affiliated with Grohe, including Grohe’s employee Patel even when Patel had no official role at the Trust, and trustee Derek Hook whom witness testimony has pointed to as a central figure in the mismanagement at the trust, e.g., due to his strong support of unqualified people Grohe recruited.
· Trustee Derek Hook has given perks to insiders over the years (paid vacations) and has undue influence at the Trust, and reportedly and allegedly participated in and supported decisions made outside the Board of Trustees which are then rubber-stamped by a passive Board. Hook is politically aligned with the Grohe Gang and has supported the people they recruited. Nasser & Mina’s rise to ultimate power would not have been possible without Hook’s support.
· Trustee Gary Primrose has been the Chair of the Trust for several years and the numerous cases of disastrous mismanagement that’s reported in Appendix 3 were all done on his watch. He was reportedly involved in several cases of mismanagement including disastrous mishandling of Inwoods. Gary Primrose is a business partner with trustee Derek Hook, and has also received monies for certain activities from Friedrich Grohe & Gang. The evidence is provided in Appendix 3.
· Trustee Wendy Smith has reportedly been involved in the mismanagement of the Trust. One of the highlights of her mismanagement was the safeguarding issues at the School for which she was the responsible Trustee. We have evidence that she was dishonest in interacting with the public, and used the same kind of convoluted, inappropriate ways that seems to have become the modus operandi at the Trust. She was also reportedly involved in the disastrous set up that led to the collapse of Inwoods.
· Some trustees have a close knit personal relationships with management and with each other (including business relationship) resulting in a collusion in mismanagement and potential conflict of interest.
· The Board of Trustees has not acted to the benefit of the Trust. There are numerous cases of mismanagement that has hurt the Trust and its reputation, and diverted it from the Trust’s mission as envisaged by the Founder.
Over Sixty Witnesses
Our careful, thorough, painstaking, extensive, objective research has identified an array of governance issues with the Trust. Our explorative research and root-cause analysis of statements of over sixty (60) witnesses, has clearly pointed to serious flaws in the power structure which the Board of Trustees is squarely responsible for. We also have direct and circumstantial evidence that several of the trustees were involved in what we consider accounts to gross mismanagement of the Trust.
Please Investigate And Overhaul The Board Of Trustees
Therefore, we plea to you to initiate a Section 46 inquiry and assign an interim manager who would facilitate replacement of the problem trustees (at a minimum please remove Derek Hook, Gary Primrose and Wendy Smith) or the entire Board of Trustees on the following grounds from the Board. These are the Trustees that our latest, updated research has identified as having partaken in some or all of the allegations of governance issues. We have a pool of highly qualified trustee candidates which we could recommend. We are confident that the new Board will address the governance and management issues and replace some of the problem elements in the management team, and put the Trust back on the path it was intended to be.
· Some trustees allegedly failed their duties by allowing a wealthy external donor become so powerful and influential at the Trust, so as to recruit a head of school who became a failure – then recruit two highly unqualified-for-the-purpose people and support them to take helm of the organization and engage in the most brutal actions in light of their strong backing from the external donor, which made them immune from the weak Board of Trustees.
· Some trustees allegedly failed their duties by allowing a wealthy donor’s employee and member of the Grohe Gang, and member of the Old Boys clan, the unofficial center of power at the Trust, to become the Executive Director of the Trust, after he had reportedly become the most powerful person at the Trust without being a trustee or even a staff member or having any role except as an informal resident “guru”; and without the sufficient qualifications in our view (his background was as a TV repairman and cook and apparently never ran any organizations beyond a kitchen); and to the contrary, he brought in and supported his predecessor who took the Trust to the lowest point in its history, in terms of morale, relationships, etc. as illustrated in Appendix 3.
· Some trustees allegedly failed their duties by allowing the real center of power and decision making body to not be the Board of Trustees, but the Old Boys clan. Many witnesses have indicated the Board of Trustees to be a weak entity that has often rubber-stamped management’s decisions which are made with the blessing of the Old Boys clan.
· Some trustees allegedly failed their duties by taking brutal actions which led to the collapse of a great, flourishing, thriving school (Inwoods) with a good level of parents’ and community engagement (against the preposterous prediction of the trustees who thought their brutal attack will not hamper the school in any way). Details are described in Appendix 3. There is sufficient evidence that some Trustees engaged with management to push fabricated fictions that led to the collapse of the school, since they were not able to achieve their goal using truthful, decent methods. Even an insider called it “brutal”. Multiple fake excuses were given to various people to justify the preposterous failure of some trustees to properly managing the Inwoods situation. We have analyzed these excuses in detail and refuted all of them (see Appendix 3), and arrived for the real root causes for the firing of Head of Inwoods which led to the school’s collapse.
· Some trustees allegedly failed their duties by allowing an extensive use of NDAs which were not used at the Trust for decades. Several of these NDAs were reportedly questionable and were used to block out resistance.
· Some trustees allegedly failed their duties that led to breach of employee privacy when a staff member’s email account was accessed by management without the knowledge of the employee or contractual agreement.
· Some trustees allegedly failed their duties that led to some employees who were getting terminated to be threatened to be charged with “Gross Misconduct” and have their severance pay withheld if the employee did not comply with terms of NDA. whilst the allegation of gross misconduct turned out to be fake as the Trust was not able to cite any instances of gross misconduct in any of those cases.
· Some trustees allegedly failed their duties by allowing Brockwood Park School to veer away from the values it held for many years, and act even contrary to its own policies.
· Some trustees allegedly failed their duties by allowing serious alleged pastoral care issues at Brockwood Park School.
· The alleged misconduct of some trustees and the Trust as a result has already damaged the trust and if it's not change it will continue to seriously damage to Trust and the public’s trust in UK charities in general.
· Some trustees allegedly failed their duties by allowing the Trust to file dishonest, unfounded police reports to quash criticism. The Trust failed to provide evidence that was requested by the police. The police decided not to investigate the matter.
· Some trustees allegedly failed their duties by not safeguarding some of the core values and legacy of the Founder of the Trust. Witness testimony indicate a huge gap between what has gone on at the Trust and the Founder’s idea of “live the teachings”. Numerous testimonies give appearance that most of the core values of the Founder have been missing in the conduct of the Trust.
· Some trustees allegedly failed their duties by the Trust acting in such ways as to have alienated many long-term supporters, staff, students, parents, donors, and other stakeholders.
· Some trustees have allegedly failed their duties by threatening critics with a lawsuit if the critics complain to the Charity Commission.
· Some trustees in charge of the school governance failed to ensure that properly trained and qualified staff were in charge of key duties at the school, including safeguarding and pastoral care. This failure of trustees resulted in failure of unqualified staff in carrying their duties which resulted in severe consequences such as hospitalization of a student because her not having eaten for 10 days was not detected, and putting the troubled student in charge of caring for other problem children, ignoring signs of health issues to the point that she developed anorexia and ended up in long term hospitalization where she was abused. The trustees’ response to her parent was dishonest, and the parent felt she was bullied.
· Some trustees have allegedly failed their duties since there are reports of sexual activity at the School because of lack of proper monitoring, care, oversight, education, including reported use of the library as a place to carry sexual acts, and a specific report of a female student who was engaged in having anal sex in the library with an older male student multiple times, and was confused and troubled by it.
· Board of Trustees allegedly failed its duties by unjustly firing of numerous valuable staff at the Trust, without good reasons.
· Board of Trustees failed its duties by the alleged bullying and pressure over fragile staff members at the Trust, leading to their departure or their stepping down to a lower responsibility job.
· The spirit of love and compassion, understanding and care that the Founder had in mind was apparently replaced by the failures of the Board of Trustees with a spirit of fear and suspicion, according to many witnesses.
· The trustees seem to have failed to institute a proper, effective process for voicing grievances and complaints. Per many witnesses, if you complained you were ousted. In our view, superficial recent changes to please ISI have brought no fundamental change to the mindset behind this issue.
· We consider that Trust has engaged in dishonest conduct, including lying to the public, the parents, and even the police, and multiple alleged instances of behavior which has come across as intimidating and bullying attempts. The Trust is repeating certain lies, e.g., about our lead investigator in order to discredit our research – while it knows them to be false, and it knows that it has not been able to substantiate its lies even when challenged, yet it repeats the same lies to other people.
330+ Page Report Contains Important Testimonies / Evidence
Our 330+ page research report is presented in Appendix 3. It contains extensive evidence to support our allegations, including testimonies of numerous witnesses, which are very consistent, and point to a defective governance and power structure at the Board of Trustees.
We have invested a tremendous amount of time into this endeavor because we deeply care about the Trust and the values and objectives it should stand for.
Our Letter To the Trust
Please find in Appendix 1 the letter we sent to the Trust to seek to resolve the issues with the Trust directly, as required by the Charity Commission as the prerequisite to filing a complaint. It was sent by a Charity Law solicitor we hired to consult and represent us in that stage of the process.
Trust’s Response Was Dishonest And Sought To Intimidate Us
The response we received from the Trust was extremely ignorant and arrogant. We wrote back to their solicitor asking them to substantiate their baseless accusations by citing a single evidence. They failed to do so and at that stage their solicitor told us she is no longer representing them.
· The Trust completely ignored the fourteen (14) issues we had identified, and failed to address any of them.
· The Trust declined our invitation to have a dialogue, based on a totally fictitious, dishonest excuse, where they attacked our lead investigator with a totally fabricated lie that they could not prove to be true and we can prove to be false.
· The Trust threatened to take legal action against us if we pursue the matter.
· The Trust implicitly accused us of unlawful conduct, without having any evidence.
· The Trust demanded that we do not contact them in any way.
· The Trust failed to provide a single piece of evidence to substantiate their awful and untrue accusations they had fabricated in order to intimidate us.
The Trust Continued To Intimidate, Gag, And Threaten Us
The Trust’s intimidating behavior did not stop there. They filed two frivolous complaints with the police against our lead investigator, despite having no evidence of any wrongdoing! We believe these dishonest complaints which totally lacked evidentiary support, were an abuse of the law enforcement process, and were designed to try to intimidate us and quash criticism by attacking and trying to discredit our investigation.
Both police organizations denied the Trust’s request for investigation. The Trust failed to provide any evidence of unlawful conduct to support its abusive complaint.
The Trust’s behavior is very similar to SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) which is a current topic in the UK parliament, and laws are being devised to prevent filing of abusive lawsuits designed to quash criticism. It seems the Trust didn't want to spend the money to file a bogus lawsuit to try to intimidate us and quash our freedom of speech, so they chose the free method: put the burden on the police; but the Trust fell on its face there because it was dishonest and it had no case.
Two of our team members, a former trustee and close friend of the Founder of the Trust, and our lead investigator, met with a trustee of the Trust. During that meeting an intimidating message was relayed by the trustee of the Trust. We were told if we file with the Charity Commission the Trust will sue us in court.
New Testimonies & Findings
We did not immediately file with the Charity Commission following the Trust’s inadequate response and stone-walling us, because the Trust engaged in intimidating us, which delayed our efforts – since we are volunteers and have limited resources – and at the same time a number of new witnesses came forward and we wanted to assess the new testimonies, which turned out to be very consistent with tens of other testimonies and painted a bleak picture of mismanagement of the Trust.
Warning About Trust’s Dishonest And Cunning Arguments
Please be mindful that the Trust is willing to make dishonest statements to cover up for its shortcomings, in order to sustain the status-quo, the defective power structure, and positions of people whose dismal report-cards are in Appendix 3! Since the Trust was willing to lie to the police, we think it will be willing to lie to the Charity Commission. And this is the Trust of a Founder who spent a lifetime discoursing about importance of truth.
Hampshire Police made the mistake of trusting the Trust and did not ask to see the key evidence that the Trust falsely told the police it has. After months of back and forth, Hampshire Police finally realized it ought to ask for the evidence it should have asked to see when the Trust first made its baseless complaint. Upon doing so, the Trust failed to provide the evidence to the police, which made the police realize that the Trust was lying. The Trust was willing to use its clout as a UK non-profit, charitable, tax exempt, educational entity to fool the police into believing the falsehood it fabricated to be fact. We believe they may do the same thing with the Charity Commission: use irrelevant arguments and false claims as a diversion tactic.
Our Objective Investigation Started With A Blank Slate
Aside from containing testimonies of so many people who were direct witnesses and victims of mistreatment at the Trust, the attached body of evidence (Appendix 3) contains an in-depth analysis of facts that we uncovered. We started this research with an absolute blank slate. Early on we asked each Trustee and the members of management team for an interview to comment on the allegations. They refused to talk to us.
Our Aim Was To Find Truth
Nevertheless, we maintained an objective stance within our ethos that truth is of utmost importance. We were after truth from day one. Our charter was not to fabricate a sensational tabloid story; none of us had anything personal to gain, nor had any axes to grind, and there were never any ulterior motives; Our aim from day one was to get to the truth of the matter regarding the disturbing allegations that some witnesses and victims were making.
Investigative Methods
The investigation we conducted was not easy or quick. It took a long time because we had a large number of witnesses, and new ones surfaced when they heard about our work; and we needed to cross check what we were told, question it from a different angle in order to determine consistency, cross analyze statements of these numerous witnesses, and apply best-practices and methods every good, objective investigator employs.
As we gathered trajectory in our investigation, consistency of the testimonies gave rise to hypotheses which gradually gave us more clarity and confidence in the conclusions we were starting to make. Pieces of the puzzle gradually came together, and the latest testimonies served to complete the puzzle. We finally answered the difficult questions we were set out to explore. Our tireless probing for truth paid off.
We Are Happy To Help
We are happy to assist you in any way possible, since we have already done a tremendous amount of research, and we have access to many witnesses and understand the intricacies of the Trust’s cunning plots to sustain the broken status quo which resulted in the alienation of so many parties as illustrated in Appendix 3.
Rescinding The NDAs
We humbly suggest the Charity Commission to consider revoking the NDAs that were put in place and talk to the people gagged by NDAs as part of the investigation. They may have a wealth of information about the mismanagement of the Trust and failure of the trustees in carrying key duties. We have spoken to people who spoke with the parties before they were gagged by NDAs and obtained useful information that were consistent with other testimonies.
Predicting Trust’s Response, Excuses, Lies It Will Tell Charity Commission
Based on what we know about the Trust, you cannot be sure that any correspondence you make with the Trust will be forwarded to all the trustees. We predict you will get a defensive response to your inquiry which will contain dishonest statements, finger pointing, not taking any responsibility, avoiding the topics, twisting the topics, bringing excuses that they have already managed the topics and have moved on (which is not true – we see no sign that the issues are resolved based on latest information we have, despite superficial changes they’ve brought. Their response may contain the following elements:
· Denying there were any problems by stating that ups and downs are normal, but what the Trust has gone through over the last 7 years is not a matter of ups and down. It’s a matter of crude mismanagement and misconduct and failure of duties, and we see no sign that anything has fundamentally changed.
· Denying there are management issues by contending decisions are made democratically at the Trust by resident staff. Testimonies indicate for a long time people have been afraid to speak up because speaking up meant getting fired. We see no fundamental change in the governance to believe anything has changed.
· Denying there were any problems by stating that they are getting donations and they have a sufficient level of enrollment at the school, and they satisfied ISI audit.
1) One of our plans is to publicize the case in various ways including sending it to UK professional investigative journalist organizations, and UK and international anti-SLAPP organizations we are in touch with, should this complain process yields no results. We are hopeful that this case will have a happy ending, which is a meaningful change at KFT in terms of replacement of some of the Trustees. We know as a matter of fact that some donation have been stopped since people started to find out about these problems (not necessarily though us since we haven’t done any mass publicity but the disgruntled people have talked about their experiences and we understand there’s a lot of discontent out there about the mismanagement of the Trust).
2) Mere enrollment at a school is not an indication that a school is living according to its charter. Brockwood Park School was not founded to be a mediocre, ordinary school. The Founder spent decades exploring the necessary criteria for the vision he had for Brockwood. In our view, much of those ideas are not applied at Brockwood, based on testimonies we have. We have uncovered serious issues including breach of core values of the School, which even the ISI radar doesn't detect, including gross hypocrisy between the policies and realities, incompetence and lack of qualifications of certain key people which has resulted in gross failures in those areas, and these findings again point to some trustees failing their duties.
· Trying to blame the experiences and statements of over 70 people on our lead investigator! They tried this futile attempt before, but because it made no sense, they had to pad it with lies and fictional irrelevant stories related to a sister foundation. They were not able to provide evidence to support their claim; and we have evidence their claim is false. They’re employing an age-old tactic that if you can’t defeat a message, attack the messenger. Fact is our lead investigator was called on to participate in this program due to his skills, and there’s no evidence whatsoever that he had any animosity towards any of the parties, or the Trust; and in fact, he reached out to them in the most neutral, fair way, to get their feedback. It’s impossible to assert any motivation in our lead investigator to justify the Trust’s futile blame game. His motivations was our motivation: to find truth, and let that truth determine the course of action.
1) The Trust has repeatedly failed in its tactic to accuse our team or our lead investigator of unlawful conduct. We called them out and demanded evidence to support their absurd allegations. They failed to provide evidence and already stated their solicitor quit the case!
2) As well as filed two bogus police reports the Trust continues to attack our lead investigator with false allegations that the Trust has not been able to prove to be true.
· Scapegoating the former Executive Director. They may try to argue that change in Executive Director solved the problems. This is a futile argument since this change in roles was very superficial and did not alter the problematic axis of power at all. Appendix 3 explains this in detail. See section: “RAMAN & NASSER'S RECENT SUPERFICIAL ROLE CHANGE
· Using departure of Gisele Balleys from the Board as an excuse of real change. Gisele Balleys was a passive trustee and overpowered by management. Nothing has changed due to her departure. A replacement has not been named. The Trust is running with the minimum number of trustees recommended by Charity Commission.
· Our concern is when you contact them they will continue to lie and state falsehoods as facts, as they’ve done to other entities.
· Claiming, as they have to public – that management as it is understood in other organisations and institutions does not apply at the Trust – which is completely nonsense. Basic management principles and good practices apply to all well-run organizations. Even if that statement is true, the result of this supposed special management style has been catastrophic, as illustrated in the statements of tens of witnesses and victims.
Many Thanks and Best Regards
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APPENDIX 1 – Our Letter To The Trust
Please note the Trust completely ignored the all the issues we raised an in turn engaged in intimidating, threatening and bullying us. When we pushed back asking for evidence for their fake claims they failed to provide it. Then they filed two complaints with two police agencies in order quash our right to Free Speech, but in both cases the police did not pursue their case, and the Trust could not respond to the police asking for evidence for what the Trust verbally told the police, which means the Trust was intentionally deceiving the police. Then a trustee threatened us that if we file with the Charity Commission the Trust would sue us, which surely would be a case of SLAPP (abusive lawsuit).
On the next pages please find the letter we sent to the Trust as pre-requisite for filing with the Charity Commission.
<Letter from our lawyer>
APPENDIX 2 – Background
Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Limited (“KFT”) is a UK charity which was started by a twentieth century philosopher, educator, author, mystic, Mr. J. Krishnamurti (“K”), who has been highly praised by many of the leading minds of our time.
K spoke and wrote about the art of living, right education, right relationship, importance of love, care, affection, attention, right place of thinking, importance of inquiry, importance of truth, clear thinking, and many other deep insights and pointers which he offered for exploration and not as something to believe or a doctrine.
He was very concerned about his work becoming corrupted by organizations such as KFT, and wrote and spoke extensively about the human psyche and the factors that could lead to such corruption. He almost abolished his Foundation in India, and he called his Foundation in America idiotic. It wasn't until after his death but the British foundation (KFT) eventually became what's Krishnamurti already dreaded.
Around year 2015 a large donor, Friedrich Grohe who has had excessively inappropriate levels of power and influence at the Trust for many years, recruited a husband and wife, Iranian citizens who were living in Australia, with no background in core aspects of the Trust, and no education or experience in the field of education, safeguarding, pastoral responsibilities, publications, archives, charities, etc., to do an audit.
The couple had the donor’s backing and support of the donor’s employee, Raman Patel, known as the most powerful person at the Trust without having any official role. Patel had gathered his power by being on the payroll of the large donor. He had moved up from the position of a cook, suddenly to an “ambassador of God” as one former trustee and close friend of the Founder sarcastically put it – since for some years, Patel played the role of missionary funded by Grohe.
The couple detected the weaknesses of the organization and in particular the weak Board of Trustees, and got engaged in firing almost everyone at the School who were there before their time, and demoted the Executive Director of the Trust and the husband took over that role and the wife took over the most important position of power at the School. They effectively became the dictators. The Board of Trustees failed to vet them, and was too weak and passive to oversee them.
The testimonies of numerous people are highly consistent and paint a very troubling picture of brutalities, dishonesty and governance issues.
Numerous horrible stories culminated with the collapse of Inwoods primary school as a result of mismanagement by the Trust. Numerous excuses were fabricated to justify what even one of the executives called a “brutal” approach. Numerous parents and staff and volunteers and others were baffled and alienated by the mismanagement of the trustees that had led to this disaster.
We got engaged and initiated a through fact-finding mission to answer big questions such as why the Director of Inwoods was fired. Our journey took a long time but we eventually arrived at the facts. We identified many root causes of the problems through our in-depth, objective research and analysis. The last piece of the puzzle appeared with the testimony of a parent whose child was neglected and suffered due to mismanagement at the Trust.