A day after the Enforcement Directorate attached assets worth Rs 1.77 crores of Rana Ayyub, the controversial journalist-activist has issued a statement putting her side of the story. In extensive reporting done by OpIndia in the past few months, it was established that while Rana Ayyub had collected substantial amounts of money through three fundraising campaigns on Ketto, she failed to utilise most of the funds, which was lying unutilised in her personal bank accounts, and also had to pay a substantial amount as income tax due to her own error.
In the detailed explanation issued by Rana Ayyub, while denying any wrongdoing, she has agreed with all the abovementioned points, that she didn’t utilise the fund for the purposes they were intended for, and also, she wasted a lot of donated money towards income tax payment.
Personal Bank Account
Explaining why the amounts were deposited in the bank accounts of her father and sister, Rana Ayyub claims that she could not use her own account as she didn’t have the physical copy of her PAN card. Therefore, she furnished the documents of her father and sister to start receiving donations.
This is a bizarre justification, as it is difficult to comprehend how someone can’t have the ‘physical copy’ of the PAN card. Does it mean she does not have a PAN card, that is uncertain.
Moreover, Rana Ayyub fails to answer why she used personal bank account, either her or her family members, for the three fundraisers, when the campaigns should have been run through dedicated bank accounts, to keep accounts of campaign money separate from their personal money.
Because she used personal bank accounts, she had to pay over Rs 1 core in income tax. This means money donated for specific purposes were paid to the exchequer. Had she used a registered NGO to receive the funds, the entire fund would have been tax exempted, and the entire money could be spent on the intended purposes.
Utilisation of collected money
After that she explain why she could not utilise the total amount of around Rs 2.7 crore she had collected in three different campaigns for three different purposes. She says that as she was hospitalised after contacting Covid-19, and some of her team members also were infected and two of them died, she could not run relief work using the money she had collected.
Rana Ayyub accepts that out of Rs 2.69 crore she had collected through Ketto, she could utilise only Rs 40 lakh. However, she does not give break up where this Rs 40 Lakh were spent, as they were collected through three different fundraising campaigns.
The three campaigns that she had run on Ketto were, Funds for slum dwellers and farmers during April- May 2020, Relief work for Assam, Bihar and Maharashtra during June- Sept 2020, and Help for Covid-19 impacted people in India during May-June 2021. All three were for distinct purpose, and two of them were intended for specific states.
But Rana Ayyub fails to mention how much was spent on each purpose, and says a total of Rs 40 lakh was spent.
Lies of cheque for hospital
She further accepts that she diverted funds from one campaign to another, as she says that she had paid Rs 90 lakh to Tilak Hospital in New Delhi for its paediatrics department to build a Covid-19 field hospital. She says that however, the cheque was returned to her without giving any reason.
She had made this claim earlier also, in an article she wrote on Washington Post in September 2021, she had claimed that she had given a cheque of $130,000 to a New Delhi hospital that was building a children’s ward. And she had claimed that the hospital had returned the cheque under political pressure. She had further written, “All the money, including the amount returned from the hospital, has now been redirected to other causes”.
However, now she refrains from claiming any ‘political pressure’.
We had earlier already showed how her claims of cheque paid for hospital does not add up, as at time, she had claimed that she had completely utilised the funds raised in her first two campaigns for slum dwellers and flood victims. But now it has become clear that all of them were lies, she didn’t utilise all the money in the first two campaigns as she had claimed in the Ketto fundraising pages.
Moreover, building a Covid-19 hospital was never the stated purpose of any of the three campaigns. And other than her own claims, there is no other source confirming that she had actually given Rs 90 lakh either to a hospital or SDMC. Therefore, she collected money in the name of three different purposes, could not use it, and probably made up a story that she had given it to build a hospital but it was returned.
Foreign donations
Rana Ayyub vehemently denies receiving foreign donations, saying all money she received was in INR. However, this is a blatant lie, as Ketto, the fundraising platform she used, had already said that out of Rs 2.69 crore collected by her, $ 1.09 lakh were foreign donations. The ED attachment notice also mentions that Rs. 80,49,856/- was received in foreign currency.
Moreover, Rana Ayyub herself had said that as she could not tie up with a FCRA licenced NGO to receive foreign donations, she has decided to refund the foreign donations the three campaigns had received. It is notable that only NGOs with FCRA registrations can receive foreign money as donations, and Rana Ayyub’s campaigns were violating the law by receiving foreign donations.
Rana Ayyub makes another strange argument in this regard, she claims that as all the donations, including the foreign donations, were received first at Ketto bank accounts, and Ketto had transferred the fund to her bank accounts in Indian Rupee, it means she didn’t received any foreign donations. But this is completely baseless argument, Ketto is just an intermediary, the fact is that Rana Ayyub received foreign donations without FCRA licence. It does not matter if the foreign currency was deposited at Ketto and Ketto had transferred the amount to her in India Rupee, it is still considered foreign money.
Income tax
Rana Ayyub has accepted that she had to pay income tax amounting to Rs 1.05 crore, as she received the donated money in personal bank accounts. She informs that her bank accounts, including a fixed deposit of Rs 50 lakh, were frozen by the I-T dept. They have been released now, after the payment of the demanded tax.
Although she might claim victory in getting the accounts released, the fact remains that the accounts were de-frozen only after she paid that tax amount. After the tax is paid, the Income Tax department will naturally release the frozen accounts, that is the normal procedure.
However, it can be reiterated that had Rana Ayyub used a registered NGO, she would not have to pay the tax, and the entire amount could have been spent for the stated purposes. Therefore, it can be considered as a diversion of the amount.
PM Cares and CM Cares fund
The most intriguing revelation in the ED notice was that Rana Ayyub had donated the leftover money to PM CARES fund and CM CARES fund, which she had accepts now. She says that she couldn’t utilise the money she had collected, she donated INR. 74.50 lakhs to the CM CARES Fund of Maharashtra, for relief work in her home state, and to the PM CARES Fund, for relief work across India. Surprisingly, she added this amount as ‘utilisation’ for relief work.
Like all Islamists and liberals, she had been a vocal critic of PM CARES fund. Therefore, everyone was surprised to see that she had donated the money of her donors to the fund started by PM Modi. By accepting that she had done this, she betrayed her own donors, as most of her donors are Modi haters, like herself.
Therefore, it can be seen that while Rana Ayyub claims innocence, she has accepted all the allegations made against her. She collected donations for three specific purposes but didn’t spend on those purposes, collected and parked the money on personal back accounts of family members, received foreign donations, had to pay income tax, and donated the rest to PM CARES fund and Maharashtra CM’s fund.
Out of the total Rs 2.69 crore collected, she utilised only Rs 40 lakh for relief work. Rs 1.05 crore was paid as income tax, Rs 74.50 lakh paid to PM CARES and CM CARES fund, and Rs 50 lakh is in Fixed Deposit in the bank, still unutilised, as per her own statement.
