An unaccounted boon?
Jeyakanth Selvarajah is a well known and
vigorous worker from Sri Lanka.
His work has been attended with considerable
visible blessing.
He is supported by or has received funding
from several parallel works:
Since the horrors of the tsunami in 2004, the war, persecutions and flood,
he has helped administer considerable funds for the relief of suffering
believers in Sri Lanka, some of these funds total in tens of thousands of
pounds.
We have been concerned to discover that the gentleman laid down a deposit on
a house in Mitcham in December 2009, in the order of £50,000, and also
undertook extensive renovation worth perhaps £20-30,000. Despite enquiries, it is not clear what the source of
these funds was.
We are assured of the integrity and good intentions of the believers (and
some open unbelievers) involved in the above institutions.
Nevertheless the safeguards in place to prevent double accounting (the
double attribution of one item to two sources, either inadvertently or
otherwise) are not completely clear, though it is manifest that there has
also been some careful coordination, no one body seems to have overarching
responsibility for all donated gifts. One direct professional witness
alleges that this seems to have occurred in Sri Lanka and London.
- 'I would strongly suggest that no payment should be paid if a receipt or proof of purchase/cost is not produced.'
- 'The receipts booklet was considerable and the manner of how these receipts were submitted and annotated upon could easy lead to confusion and error when accounting'
- 'There is also no confirmation from Natwest as per usual of August’s payment of £5000.'
A revised version of the accounts with these concerns no longer raised has now been published for 2014 with the latest set of accounts for 2015.
We welcome this improvement in accounting rigour, however concerns about duplicate accounts from multiple sources remain.
As of August 2016, all reference to Jeyakanth and his colleagues has been removed from the Sunshine Charity website.
On the 26th August, Jeyakanth refers to police involvement at the site. 'This morning I got an urgent phone call from our head office in 6th Mile Post. They informed me that a team of army and police personal had turned up a few hours ago and along with Trustee members of the sunshine nursery charity in order to forcefully get access to the nursery building, accusing our staff and creating pain and fear among our people.' We understand title to the buildings is in question and the matter is now a legal concern.
We continue to recommend a fact finding investigation employing an open invitation for selecting
witnesses and an independent interpreter for Tamil speakers.
Providing for honest things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men.
2 Corinthians 8.21
In the week commencing 18/11/18, two men who have worked with Jeyakanth in these homes, one of whom acted as a legal guide, and was named in an official report by one of the supporting agencies were summoned to a Sri Lankan High Court on charges of sexual offences against a child. The second man did not appear, reporting himself to be ill.
These concerns have been raised with some of the supporting agencies since 2011 - the first court summons in Trincomalee was on 2/3/2012, the delays in bringing this trial given the gravity and nature of the charges are regrettable.
Jeyakanth has attempted to defend himself in some detail here. There are numerous factual inaccuracies in this, as I know both from court and other official documentation and multiply corroborated testimonies.
More on this background here.
A brother who has been a SFO investigator for 18 years looks at the arrangements for funding of the LEFC and finds them very wanting.
Readers who detect factual errors in this
page are invited to submit corrections to no spaces c p soper at g mail dot com.
Created 7/7/2011 Last modified 25/3/2022
