Also See:
KFT Mismanagement Report: https://www.rezamusic.com/writings/on-j-krishnamurtis-work/KFT-Mismanagement
By Reza Ganjavi
In Autumn 2020, I was called on by people familiar with a reported scandal at the Krishnamurti Foundation Trust/Brockwood Park School regarding the collapse of the Inwoods Small School, where 93% of the students had left after the school’s beloved principal was brutally, dishonestly, viciously, incompetently fired by the Trust in very suspicious circumstances where she was blamed but the students and parents absolutely adored her, and the Trust gave inconsistent reasons for her firing, which was suspicious in itself. Truth is consistent. Lies are often inconsistent.
I accepted the assignment, which did not pay any money, due to my friendship with the Founder of the Trust, who’s long been dead. I met him the last 3 years of his life when I was very young and he gave me a flower and many pointers and challenges that in years to come helped my life.
The endeavor took two years. We made a task force and did an extensive investigation with an absolutely open mind, in search of truth. The outcome was not unknown up front. Our only objective was to find truth and we knew once it was found, the course of further action, if any, would become clear.
The statements of over 70 witnesses told a very consistent story of gross mismanagement, misconduct, irresponsibility, incompetence, breach of duties at the highest level of the Trust, and identified the root causes of the problems, at the center of which, the inappropriate influence of a rich donor, Friedrich Grohe, whom at some point was called a Guardian Angel by Krishnamurti but in the ensuing years turned out to be a Fallen Angel as one of Krishnamurti’s close friends and a former trustee put it.
Mr. Grohe’s influence was mainly due to Raman Patel, his employee and part of his Gang as he calls them, and extended circle of people who’ve received perks from Mr. Grohe over the years, including Antonio Autor, Bill Taylor, part of KFT’s Management Team, and part of the so-called “Old Boys clan”. Many witnesses viewed the Board of Trustees as weak and submissive to the decisions of the real center of power. Grohe’s Gang brought in Nasser Shamim and Mina Masoumian who ended up becoming holding the most powerful positions at the Trust, without the necessary qualifications. For example, Mina became the most powerful person at Brockwood Park School without having any background or education in pedagogy, school administration, safeguarding, pastoral care, etc. – needless to say the results were disastrous, as spelled out in the extensive body of evidence.
Nasser’s mismanagement is also well-documented. And all these are ultimately failures of the trustees. The end result was not just collapse of Inwoods but numerous accounts of people reporting abuse, mistreatment, and other cases of mismanagement, people crying, people reporting getting threatened with bogus charges of gross misconduct to pressure them to sign releases, etc.
Once the facts were clear, course of action became clear for our team: file a complaint with the Charity Commission (“CC”).
Following CC’s requirement, we contacted the Trust with a list of 14 issues to give them a chance to respond. We did so via an attorney we hired in the UK to represent us for that very specific purpose. The Trust’s response was a further portrayal of the mismanagement. They turned and twisted arguments, totally ignored the issues, and stated falsehoods and facts. And they turned down our invitation for dialogue due to a creepy, nonsensical, absolutely false excuse. Their excuse was because I had dialogues with KFA (Krishnamurti Foundation America) and it had not yielded results, therefore KFT does not want to talk to our team. Presently, I will document my dealings with KFT to illustrate how off KFT is in this fiction they stated as fact.
Furthermore, in their response, sent to us via their attorney, they tried to intimidate, threaten and bully us, in order to quash our criticism. In response, we asked them for evidence to support the false accusations they were making; they had thrown out words such as stalking, harassment, defamation, none of which applied. We had never engaged in any unlawful conduct towards them and had always acted civilly and lawfully.
In response to our call for evidence, not only did they/their lawyer fail to provide any evidence, their lawyer informed us that she’s no longer representing them!
The Trust didn’t stop there. After it failed to provide evidence against us, when we demanded it, it upped the ante, and filed against me with two police departments, alleging that I had sent them unwanted emails after they had purportedly informed me not to email them – which was absolutely false. To this date, they have never informed me not to email them.
They started character attack against me – which I believe they’ve also done in the past – by the reference to the fake report of some purported failed dialogue with KFA (my contact is written in the next section and fact was there was never a dialogue with their Executive Director who was also appointed by Grohe and his Gang – who had lied about me).
The goal of the Trust’s character attacks against me was solely to try to discredit me, in order to discredit the message, which they tried to futilely blame me for the statements of over 70 people! This was an old habit the Grohe Gang and their influences at the KFA and KFT had: they did not like criticism – and criticism however constructive was countered by a vile attempt to discredit the messenger in order to discard the message.
The problem for the Trust this time around, trying to use the same vicious method of shooting the messenger, was that I was not the messenger. I was an investigator and reporter part of a team, that included heavy weights such as close friends of Krishnamurti, former staff, trustees, parents, students, donors, volunteers, all of whom cared deeply about the mission of the Trust and work of its Founder.
But in its unwise preposterous ways that they had pulled on so many people as illustrated in the report, the Trust still vainly tried that tactic and tried to blame me for the statements of over 70 people and work of our team!!
They continued their character attack with two frivolous reports they made to two police departments. Both unfortunately for the Trust, their effort fell on its face. Both police departments decided not to pursue the case because no laws were broken.
Both police departments informed me that they would not pursue the Trust’s case. But in the process, I detected something strange – so I investigated the matter.
Regarding Swiss police, it turned out that Raman Patel, Nasser Shamim, Mina Masoumian were probably on a paid summer holiday in Swiss mountains funded by Grohe, and they walked into a police office near Grohe’s house and complained and as evidence they provided copies of emails which were 100% lawful – I had initially written to them at the onset of my investigation in order to get their point of view – and they had begged the Swiss police not to tell me who was the complainer.
I happen to know a few things about the law, having grown up in the house of a man, my father, who had a stellar career in law including being a Supreme Court Justice and a Judge of Judges, and Professor of Law, and numerous other legal positions, and my mother’s father was a lawyer, and most of our family friends were judges and lawyers, and I studied law out of interest and necessity when I was a victim of gang cyber-stalking in the US following the tremendous success of my classical guitar CDs which attracted jealous, racist guitarists who ganged up to anonymously try to destroy my character. Unfortunately for them, given my professional IT background and legal studies, I dug every single one out of their anonymous hole and brought them to justice.
Anyway, I had the legal right to know who had complained about me and despite the police’s resistance since Mina had begged them to not disclose their identity, I spoke to the cantonal prosecutor’s office and I educated the police that they must disclose the names otherwise they would face legal consequences. So I found out who had complained: Raman, Nasser, Mina. Not surprising. Unfortunately for the Trust, Swiss police did not open a case.
The second police department the Trust complained to was Hampshire police. The same story. They decided not to open a case. But also I sensed the police was lied to by the Trust. So I pursued the matter. And long story short (it’s documented in detail on my site’s writings section www.rezamusic.com) the police went back to the Trust and demanded proof that the Trust had informed me not to contact them – because my emails per se were not unlawful so the only thing the Trust might have been able to hung its hat on would have been my not respecting if they had said they did not want to be contacted which a) to this day, they have never made any such demand from me; they made that demand from the task-force months later b) given their public status, unless a communication is abusive, they don’t have the right to legally insist not be contacted by a member of public.
Unfortunately for the Trust, they were not able to provide evidence for the police – which proved they were lying. Had they ever informed me as they lied to the police about, there would have been a record of it, but there was no evidence because they lied to the police.
Imagine how much time and effort and energy I had to spend dealing with these preposterous attacks of the Trust against me, just to discard the message of over 70 people who had criticized the Trust, just because I was the investigator, journalist, reporter.
The Trust’s behavior was very much along the lines of SLAPPs. I wish the UK had anti-SLAPP laws like the US, but legislative discussions are ongoing because the Trust is not the only company that uses frivolous, baseless threats to try to shut critics up.
The Trust didn’t want to spend the money bringing a baseless SLAPP lawsuit so they abused the goodwill and power of law enforcement which are funded by taxpayers while the Trust is tax-exempt as a UK Charity.
All the pieces of the puzzle came together and we answered many of the questions that the Trust had tried to convolute and sweep under the rug. The result is in the latest version (8) of a 330-page report we published.
Our next step is to file with the Charity Commission then my engagement is done, thank God as it consumed so much of my time and energy and life and money for two years.
It was a very painful road but in the process I met many fine people, many of whom were victims of mismanagement at KFT, and many who cared deeply about the place and K’s work who were left alienated.
Also see: Statement Of Reza Ganjavi, MBA, About His Interaction With Krishnamurti Foundation America (KFA), Which KFT Misrepresented and Falsified When It Used It As An Excuse To Not Have Dialogue With Activist Taskforce https://www.rezamusic.com/writings/on-j-krishnamurtis-work/reza-ganjavi-on-his-interaction-with-kfa-which-kft-falsified