Climate Conversation Group

Pachauri – climate prophet for profit

Is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), dealing with us (his global constituents, as it were) honestly?

Richard North, in a blog piece called Pachauri: How much is this man getting?, says:

What we are seeing here … is an interesting modus vivendi — three different payments to support the chairman of the IPCC, yet each payment is made by a different organisation to a different organisation — one in the US, one in the UK and one in India. No one knows what the other is doing — except Pachauri, of course.

Why were these payments made in such complex fashion? Apparently his United Nations salary is not publicly disclosed — why not?

On January 6, 2010, in an article entitled Pachauri: the smoking gun, Dr Richard North describes how

TERI Europe was engaged in the production of a report for which it must have attracted funding in the order of £70,000 and incurred considerable expense, yet it shows an income of £9,000 and an expenditure of £5,000.

Even if there is a substantial discount on the SI2 report, it is simply not credible that TERI Europe could have operated that year with an income so low, or spent so little. On the face of it, we are very much closer to showing that this organisation has indeed been guilty of false accounting, and misleading the Charity Commission.

We have written to the FCO, formally asking for details of the amounts paid to TERI Europe for the project, and await their response with interest. We will keep you appraised, as the noose tightens.

There was a further article on January 10, in Pachauri: conflict of interest, in which North reports on an article in the New Delhi Mail Today by journalist Ajmer Singh, critical of Pachauri.

It sets out his past directorships on the boards of three of India’s largest public-sector energy companies and says that, as recently as June 2009, he was an independent director on the board of India’s Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC). Singh points out the potential conflict of interest in working against fossil fuel emissions while serving on the board of an oil company. Singh writes:

In his defence, Pachauri says he is now not on the board of any public sector undertaking, then declares: “What is stated applies only for short periods in the past … TERI is a not-for-profit organisation working for the welfare of society and its revenues cover costs and provide no private benefit to any party.”

Singh remains unconvinced. He says: “Pachauri’s position is untenable,” and goes on to detail commercial, climate-related ventures Pachauri’s companies are involved with. It is impossible that Pachauri knows nothing of these activities.

In subsequent articles, North uncovers complicated financial transactions between the IPCC, the British government and Pachauri’s companies that he likens to the money-laundering transactions of organised crime. Not that there is evidence of any crimes, but the question naturally arises of why the transactions must be so circuitous — so far from normal commercial practice.

There is also the strange question of why, in a report to Parliament, a payment by the UK Met Office to TERI, which was actually £1,436,162, is entered as £543,816.

North has uncovered so many contracts awarded to TERI and its subsidiaries and so many connections between Pachauri, his fellow directors and big oil and energy companies, while recording flat-out denials from Pachauri that he or even his company benefits from these associations and contracts, yet he lives in about the most expensive street in all of India and exhibits a wealthy style of living, that an inquiry is already justified.

What on earth will Richard North add on Sunday?