Johnnie Moore’s Gospel for Asia Evasive Maneuvers

Yesterday, I posted a link to a CBC radio documentary about Gospel for Asia’s use of Canadian funds. In this program by Angela MacIvor, PR guru Johnnie Moore was interviewed and made some dubious claims. I take one of them up today. I’ll examine the others in future posts.

During the interview with Moore, MacIvor asked

Can you explain how it’s possible in a period between 2007-2014, GFA reported to the Canadian Revenue Agency that nearly $94-million left Canada and went to India during that time period but GFA reported to the Indian government that zero dollars went to India?

Moore gave a truly extraordinary answer:

I contest that those statistics are factual. The organization has always contested that that is a factual characterization of that and not to mention the organization doesn’t exclusively operate in India. They operate, their partner, they operate in 20 other countries around the world as well.

This issue was one of the earliest matters I researched regarding GFA. In June 2015, I asked former GFA COO David Carroll why funds listed in Canada as going to India didn’t show up as arriving from Canada in Indian documents. He told me:

The Canadian funds were combined with U.S. funds by our auditor in India for various accounting reasons. There is no requirement that they be reported separately.

However, in the Indian reports, funds were listed as originating from other nations, such as Australia, Germany and the UK. According to Indian regulations and contrary to Carroll’s claim, the national source of the funds has to be listed. As noted by MacIvor, for an 8 year period, it appeared Canada had not sent funds when in fact, almost $94-million had been donated specifically for India.

I want to make it clear that Moore’s mention of the other nations where GFA works is irrelevant. The Canadian branch of GFA specifically said in government reports (see this post for images of those reports) the money was being sent to India. This information must be reported accurately. If GFA Canada wanted to send it somewhere else, then some other nation would have been listed. Moore’s statement about other nations was a distraction.

In response to what appeared to be gaslighting from Moore, MacIvor followed up by asked if GFA wants the public to ignore those public reports. Moore’s answer was stunning:

I am not saying you shouldn’t look at those. People ought to have the humility to ask themselves a more important question which is: What is it that I might not know about this? What is the information that I might not have? Or the information that might not be available in the public domain? And I think there are vast gaps between the two pieces of information.

Humility? It is the height of arrogance for Johnnie Moore to accuse donors, former staff of GFA, and members of the public of lacking humility. Since 2015, hundreds of people have been asking GFA for answers to questions about their financial practices only to be met with silence or evasion. When I asked these exact questions (what don’t I know? what can make this make sense?), all I got was silence and name-calling. When a federal judge wanted answers to questions like this, all he got was stone-walling from GFA. I wish the reporter would have asked Johnnie Moore about the sanctions Judge Timothy Brooks imposed on GFA for failure to respond to questions about financial information during the fraud lawsuit brought by  Garland and Phyllis Murphy.

Then Moore dodged the last question posed by MacIvor when she rightfully asked for the information we mere mortals don’t have. Moore’s reply?

Yeah, first of all, that’s a question for the Believers Eastern Church in India and around the world. That’s a question that needs to be asked of them.

How convenient. K.P. Yohannan isn’t available, so they bring in Moore from D.C. to speak for Yohannan on GFA matters, but when Moore turns the attention to Believers’ Church, all of sudden he can’t speak for Yohannan.

Moore got away without answering the questions. So Moore chides the public for failure to understand something he refuses to disclose. The appeal to Believers Church is a disgusting dodge. Not only is Yohannan the head of the church, but GFA in Canada and the U.S. is responsible for how donor funds are spent. GFA needs to know why the funds they sent to India didn’t show up in records there. It is obvious GFA knows or else they would just as concerned about it (where is our money?).

There are two other issues I want to take up from this interview. First, what does it mean that all the funds given to “the field” went to the field? Second, what about those hospitals in India? Moore was asked about that and misrepresented the situation. More to come in future posts…

5 thoughts on “Johnnie Moore’s Gospel for Asia Evasive Maneuvers”

  1. There appears to be a lot of interconnected monkey business going on in GFA. 9.4 million dollars is a great deal of money to disappear between Canada and/or the US and India–more, I would think, than can be explained by sloppy bookkeeping. Who in the GFA hierarchy is quite a bit wealthier than he used to be?

  2. To my Canadian ears, Moore came across as an arrogant American, and I believe he would have come across that way if it had been the BBC, Radio New Zealand, or Australian Broadcasting Corporation doing the interview. The impression was he knew diddly squat about the GFA issues involving Canada and couldn’t have cared less.

    Putting Johnnie Moore on after Bruce Morrison was a remarkable and startling contrast.

    I despair that Rev Can and The UK Charity Commission got anywhere after 5 years, and it is humbling to know Morrison has not given up.

    I think Angela MacIvor did a good job given she had just 26 minutes to tell a complicated tale.

    1. What a mess this all is. Liars pay mammon to other liars to spin things that are clearly evil as if they are not.

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