Did Ravinder Singh misappropriate Khalsa Aid donations for his lavish life, check report

New Delhi: The interrogation of a staffer of charity organisation Khalsa Aid International (‘Khalsa Aid”) by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in connection with activities of banned extremist group Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) and the subsequent nomination of the organisation for Nobel Peace Prize has puzzled and mystified the country.

However, security agencies believe that the organisation acts as a front of the prescribed outfit Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) and helps it in financing terror. A case registered by the NIA in August 2012 claimed the same.

Though Khalsa Aid International and its CEO Ravinder Singh also known as Ravi Singh have been openly supporting Khalistani extremism, official documents of Khalsa Aid represent an interesting picture. The documents accessed by Zee News from the Charity Commission of the UK government indicate that Ravinder Singh has been deceiving the donors of Khalsa Aid. It shows underutilisation, maneuvering, and tricking of funds received by the organisation pointing at brazen corruption.

The documents show that for the fiscal year 2018-19, Khalsa Aid raised £3,901,362 as funds. However, during the same year, it only spent £1,384,104 nearly one-third of its total income. 

The documents of previous years also show a huge difference between receipts and expenditure. A couple of insiders and members of the Sikh community talk about two possibilities or channels of expenditure of these funds. Firstly, numerous Sikh philanthropists have kept on highlighting that Ravinder Singh misappropriated funds donated to Khalsa Aid to maintain his lavish and royal lifestyle. And secondly, they expressed that there is a great probability of Khalsa Aid working as a funding organisation for the BKI.

Zee News also visited the website of Khalsa Aid (khalsaaid.org), but could not locate any balance sheet, audit reports, financial statements — anything which could lead to accountability or transparency. Auditors have highlighted that in countries like New Zealand and Australia — where it is unregistered, Khalsa Aid has gobbled thousands of dollars of funders without utilising it for charity purposes.

The company documents at the UK government's Company House's website highlights that initially Ravinder Singh registered Khalsa Aid as a ‘Limited’ company, and wanted to make profits by the business of charity. After operating unregistered for years, he registered the company ‘Khalsa Aid Limited’, a private company limited by guarantee without share capital, on March 8, 2008.

However, failing to make profits for years, he dissolved the company on November 27, 2011. Before closing his shop, Ravinder Singh set up a new one. On May 31, 2011, he set up another company by the name of ‘Khalsa Aid’, which was a ‘Private Limited Company by guarantee without share capital use of ‘Limited’ exemption’.

Nevertheless, this again could not turn Ravinder Singh’s fortunes and he had to shut it down on January 8, 2013. Continuing his attempts to make money through the hit and trial method, he ended up registering his organisation as a charitable organisation by the name of ‘Khalsa Aid International’ on August 25, 2015.

Hence, by mixing up data and manipulating facts, Khalsa Aid shows itself as a ‘charitable organisation’ that is over two decades old, without mentioning that it operated as a for-profit organisation for more than almost one and a half-decade. A wordsmith and a wizard of jugglery, Ravinder Singh has been interchangeably using the organisations ‘Khalsa Aid’ - a company meant for-profit and ‘Khalsa Aid International’ — a charitable organisation.

Ajmer Singh Randhawa, a former office bearer of Khalsa Aid, has been highlighting the scam being carried out by Ravinder Singh under the guise of his charity organisation. He also mentioned that he has acted as a barrier for other Sikh charity organisations and have been sabotaging their fund-raising campaigns through propaganda.

Randhawa, who calls himself a ‘blogger’, wrote, “Ravi Singh had called all other Sikh individuals and organizations working in charity and working in the field of service to panth UNTRUSTWORTHY... When I read his comment, I objected to it and asked him the reason, calling himself as only a servant of Khalsa nation but others as untrustworthy, instead of giving a suitable answer to my query, he made it a war of words. Many other ignorant blind followers of him too joined it and started attacking me on facebook, trying to defame me. Few who knew his reality of living lavishly on Sangat's money joined me and helped to raise this voice against his false propaganda.”

Adding his voice to those exposing the fraudulent activities of Ravinder Singh through Khalsa Aid, a member of the Sikh community, on a discussion over an online forum dedicated to Sikhism, shared the pie-chart on the difference between the income and expenditure of Khalsa Aid and commented — “What are your thoughts? Something doesn't add up.. either our community is numb oblivious or doesn't care.”

His statements and activities of lobbying within the Sikh community and marginalising other Sikh charity organisations highlight that he aspires to become the undebated champion by receiving almost all the funding coming in from Sikh donors and philanthropists. He considers another Sikh group ‘United Sikhs’, which runs a similar charity organisation ‘Sikh Aid’, as his opponent and in a long article authored over a Sikh portal in 2006, termed them “another organization mushroomed for monetary gain’..”

These revelations and similar expose have increasingly started coming to light. Transparency groups believe that such exposures would soon lead to an investigation by economic crime investigation agencies in the UK and across the world. However, they also argue that a greater number of whistleblowers from within the Sikh community should start calling out the financial irregularities of Khalsa Aid International and other crowdfunding entities as well, as every money donated to all these organisations are based on the faith of donors on Sikhism and misappropriation of every single penny would amount to an act of denting that image.