Arulraj's scamming New Life Society website down



The scamming website has been down since 28 March
- not even its logo remains



Well, would you believe it again?!  It took a little longer, but after last week's removal of the Linked-In profile for "Fr Gali Arulraj" we now have the removal of the website of his scamming  "New Life Society for the Poor and Handicapped."

The website has been down for more than 24 hours, which suggests that there is not merely a temporary problem with it. If you go to the website you get a  HTTP 403 Forbidden notice, which indicates that access to the website is being deliberately denied by the server. It is too early to say whether the website might be made active again.

Given that Arulraj went to the trouble and expense of setting up the website as part of his scam to make money, its removal is very welcome.  In itself it has justified the presence of this blog.

The continued presence of this blog is also more than justified as a warning to anyone who is a potential victim of a scam by "Fr Gali Arulraj" or "Mr G.A. Raj" working for the "Dayananda Nilayam Society for Social Development", the "New Life Society for the Poor and Handicapped", or (another of his made-up charity names) the  "Home for the Orphans and Disabled Children."

The blog will also stay in order to draw attention to any new scams that come to my notice.

Of course, with the exposure that  "Mr G.A. Raj" was in fact Arulraj, he may have wanted his scamming New Life Society website removed as it was further evidence of his ongoing criminal activities. If there are any police officers, tax officials, Delhi Home Ministry officials, NGO Registration officials, FCRA investigators, or anybody else who needs evidence of the scamming website then they can still get that evidence.  I made copies of everything that was on the website and will be happy to make them available.

The evidence of Arulraj's million pound scam

"I can live my priestly life under a tree or in a hut. I do not need these buildings. They are meant for the disabled children and not for me. I have lived hard way and I can live hard way till my death."

                      -  (Fr) Gali Arulraj.  Email to Enable's Chair, Alison Davis, 6 May 2006

"All these years I was doing all the works that have been asked by Fr Gali Arulraj on your behalf without taking a rupee except the gift you give when you come to India."

                     - (Fr) Vatakili Paulinraj.  Final email to Alison Davis and Colin Harte, 3 June 2006

Well, that's what they said......but the evidence tells a very different story:

The  fraudulent DNSSD accounts for the year ending March 2006   indicate that apart from about £3,000 received from two other sources, DNSSD relied on Enable to funds its projects. This was the pattern of previous years too and Enable understood it was providing 98% of DNSSD's income.

The (genuine) DNSSD bank statements (of which I now have a copy), that came to light during the police investigation, revealed that in the years during which Enable understood that it was providing a necessary 98% of DNSSD's income, it was in fact providing only 37% of its income.  In addition to Enable's funds, DNSSD received during that period donations of INR (Indian Rupees) 85,350,785 from other overseas sources. This amount was embezzled - not used for charitable purposes. Taking into account fluctuations in the exchange rate this is an amount in the region of 1.2 million pounds sterling (close to two million dollars or euros).

If you scammed a million pounds in the UK or the equivalent amount of dollars in the USA you would be a wealthy person. Multiply that amount several times and you will get a glimpse of the scale of luxury provided by Arulraj's scam in a small town like Ongole in South India.



The palatial property in Gollipudi Street, Santhapet, Ongole built for Arulraj's wife and children from embezzled funds



The same property, which is so secluded it cannot be seen clearly from the main road, and is too large to be pictured clearly.  This side view was photographed by me after a neighbour allowed me access to his property.



The charge sheet, dealing with the crimes of Arulraj and his associates was filed in court in Ongole and  reveals what happened to some of the embezzled funds.  In addition to the property, photographed above, it gives details of other properties (not previously declared) in Ongole and also one as far away as Bangalore.

The charge sheet gives details of a property, constructed for INR 21,01,112 (about £30,000 - a large amount in Ongole) in the name of (Fr) Vatakili Paulinraj. Why he needed the house is unclear given that he  was working as a parish priest some distance away at the time, living in a house provided by the diocese. Unlike Arulraj who was scamming full-time, Paulinraj visited the DNSSD projects for just a few hours every week or two. There is no way that a priest like Paulinraj could have honestly amassed such a large amount (especially by Indian standards) to construct a house for himself.   Paulinraj also had  INR 48,77,700 (about £70,000) transferred from DNSSD in his bank account.   Arulraj rewarded his nephew Paulinraj well for his involvement in the scams, no doubt knowing he couldn't have been so successful without him. 

In addition to the properties he bought or constructed from embezzled funds, the charge sheet records that Arulraj had INR 65,56,749 (about £94,000) transferred from DNSSD in his personal bank account. The DNSSD bank statements show that the charity account had also been used like a personal bank account with a range of large withdrawals made over the years for unidentified purposes.

The evidence of the bank statements, as well as the findings uncovered by the Indian police investigation and included in the charge sheet, demonstrates clearly that Gali Arulraj, with the support of Vatakili Paulinraj and others, was a million pound scammer. 

How the scam works



Fraudulent DNSSD accounts for the financial year ending March 2006
signed off by the chartered accountant and Gali Arulraj


How could Gali Arulraj get away with scamming Enable and other agencies for so many years? Didn't Enable monitor the projects? Didn't Enable view his society's accounts?

In fact, Enable was more conscientious about monitoring the projects in India than most comparable international agencies.  Two of Enable's trustees visited the projects in India in 1995, 1997, and 1998.  Thereafter, at least two  trustees (and usually more) visited each January between 2001 and 2006, each visit lasting two weeks. During those January visits Enable's trustees closely monitored how well the projects were functioning,  discussed possible developments, and went carefully through the accounts statements with Gali Arulraj and Vatakili Paulinraj.  We examined the formal accounts we had received for the financial year (ending in March), which were signed off by the chartered account, Mr Parchuri Venkata Ranganadham (whom I met). We also examined an informal set of accounts for the calendar year (January to December) and based subsequent funding decisions on (what we reasonably believed to be) accurate and reliable information.

As has been described in the first post on this blog, the chartered accountant signed off statements of the accounts knowing them to be entirely false.  They were tailor-made to deceive Enable.  There is nothing that an overseas aid agency can do in the face of systematic corruption by people who are willing not only to violate their professional code of ethics but to break the law. It was only by chance that Enable uncovered Arulraj's scam with the DNSSD after discovering that Mr Ranganadham had falsely certified the accounts of another charity.

The formal sets of DNNSD accounts were also signed off by Arulraj (as shown in the picture above). The informal accounts, which were equally false, were signed off by both Arulraj and Paulinraj (below).



Fraudulent informal DNSSD accounts for the calendar year Jan- Dec 2005, signed by Paulinraj and Arulraj, presented to  Enable's trustees in January 2006 in order to raise funds by deception.
(This is my copy and the scribbling on the right hand side is mine, converting the figures given in Indian rupees into pounds. This is the summary page and further details were provided on attached pages.) 


How the scams in countries like India work:

Scam Level 1:  At this level scams are simple.  The scammer provides no service whatsoever, but provides potential donors with plans, e.g., to provide a community water pump.  If the scammer gets funding, he merely obtains old photos from other service providers and sends them to the donors showing them how well their money was used.  (Their donation, of course, has helped nobody but the scammer).  Of course, even scams like this require an investment from the scammer - there are costs involved in getting letters and photos printed and mailed overseas. If the investment is £300, but results in funds of £5,000 then the investment is well worth it.

Scam Level 2.   Scams at this level require a little more investment if there is a chance that there may at some point be monitoring of the projects for which funding is sought. If the scammer is obtaining funds for a school for 100 poor children, he might rent a small property and village children might be invited occasionally for something like a cultural programme or medical check-up. He might give a cash incentive to the children's family to encourage the participation of the children. If someone from an international agency were to visit, the scammer would make sure that the children were in attendance during the few hours that the visit would take place. It would be unlikely that the visitor spoke the children's language and so he or she could not directly question the children. Compared with Level 1 scams, the scammer might have to make a larger investment, say £5,000 but it would be well worth it if the returns were, say, £20,000.

Scam Level 3.  At this level the scammer has to work much harder and actually provide a real service that has real beneficiaries. Arulraj's scam during the years 1995 - 2006 worked at this level, and the harder he worked the more lucrative it became. The fact that he could verifiably demonstrate significant benefits to those in need - by providing surgery, educating very disabled children, building more residential centres, etc. - made it easier to gain the confidence of donors. A Level 3 scammer would, for example, seek £5,000 from a donor  for surgery for 25 children and then show the donor  photos of the children after they had it.  Two or three other donors would make the same donation (believing they were funding the surgery) and receive the same photos. With this scam, 25 children would have benefited from surgery, but this would effectively be an 'investment' by the scammer, who would be keeping for himself the 'duplicate' donations for the same service. At this level, the scam requires fraudulent accounting. Arulraj's scam worked thanks to the complicity of his chartered accountant Mr P.V. Ranganadham.  Yes, Arulraj did provide an actual service for a large number of disabled children. Enable's intensive monitoring over several years required this. During the financial year 2005-2006 Arulraj's 'investment' (i.e., the amount he spent from donations to DNSSD on providing a concrete service for disabled children) was about £185,000.  However, he ciphoned off for himself a similar sized amount from donations not declared in the DNSSD accounts.

Ironically, it was Arulraj who explained to me (when we were on good terms before 2006) how scams work in India, though he spoke only of Level 1 and Level 2 scams, of which he was contemptuous. He spoke about the scams as a contrast to the 'genuine' service that he was providing! He didn't speak of Level 3 scams (which is not surprising!), yet these are, in my view, even more contemptible.  Arulraj knew the serious needs of disabled children in his region.  He knew that although many were being helped, so many others desperately lacked the care and support - medical, personal, social and educational - that would have made an enormous difference to their lives and the lives of the families. He stole from those who have needs greater than anything he will ever experience. His theft demonstrates that he was not concerned about caring for disabled children. For him they were merely a business: the bigger the 'investment,' the greater his financial reward.

Having been a Level 3 scammer until 2006, Arulraj Raj is now an occasional Level 2 scammer, but generally operates now at Level 1.

An introduction to (Fr) Gali Arulraj



Gali Arulraj - a scamming, thieving Catholic priest with a 'wife' and kids



Gali Arulraj is a Catholic priest of the Diocese of Nellore, in Andhra Pradesh state, South India.  He was ordained a priest in 1981. 

While parish priest in the town of Kanigiri, he established an independent charity, called the Dayananda Nilayam Society for Social Development (DNSSD). Since its inception Arulraj has been Director of DNSSD.

Between 1998 and 2006 the main donor to DNSSD was a registered UK charity, Enable (Working in India).

Since 2006, Enable has discovered that Arulraj, with associates,  embezzled donations in excess of one million pounds.

In 2007, Gali Arulraj and three associates were charged by the Indian police, at Ongole, Andhra Pradesh, with a number of criminal offences, including theft, criminal conspiracy, 'cheating' and fraud.  Those charged with Arulraj are (Fr) Vatakili Paulinraj (Arulraj's nephew who is also a priest of the Diocese of Nellore), Dr Gudipati Subba Rao (a medical practitioner at the DNSSD projects), and  Mrs Gongeda Sujatha (described in the charge sheet and elsewhere as the 'wife' of Gali Arulraj. Her name is sometimes written as Gangada Sujatha).

The charges were brought in 2007, but the case has still not come to the criminal court.

Although Catholic priests are not allowed to marry, Mrs Gongeda Sujatha is known as Arulraj's 'wife'.  It is unclear whether they have formally married, but Arulraj is recognised as the father to her two young children.


There were several elements to Arulraj's deception during the years that Enable supported DNSSD.  At first he was a priest in good standing with his bishop and diocese. When he abandoned his diocesan responsibilities in violation of his obedience to his bishop (from 1997) and lived as a married man with his 'wife' and children, he continued to present himself as a priest in good standing.  His deception was made possible due to the complicity of his nephew, (Fr) Vatakili Paulinraj [whose name is sometimes given as Fr V. Paulin Raj], who served as Secretary/Treasurer of DNSSD.  With Paulinraj at times concelebrating with him, Arulraj performed the sacred priestly action of celebrating Holy Mass, even though he was living a way of life that made a mockery of that sacred action.  No one in Enable knew anything about Arulraj's double life until June 2006.

(Fr) Vatakili Paulinraj assisted Arulraj's deception

Arulraj and Paulinraj embezzled funds by presenting Enable with sets of false accounts over several years.  An informal set was provided for the calendar year during visits to India by Enable representatives each January.  A formal set of accounts, signed off by a chartered accountant, Mr Parchuri Venkata Ranganadham, of Ongole, was prepared for each financial year, ending in March.  Enable was also presented with 'bank statements' signed by a manager of the Indian Overseas Bank, Trunk Road, Ongole  (with whom I met and received confirmation of the authenticity of the 'statements').  The subsequent police investigation revealed that both the bank manager and the chartered accountant had fraudulently approved entirely false accounts and bank statements.  Arulraj's 'scam' had been to simultaneously raise funds from other donors, about whom Enable was not informed, and there was no record of those other donations on the accounts shown to us.  In turn, the other donors were not informed about the donations DNSSD received from Enable.

The scam enabled Arulraj and Paulinraj to embezzle more than one million pounds.  They kept for themselves donations that had been given to support disabled children.  In other words, they stole from the poorest in Indian society to enrich themselves. The evidence of their embezzlement was discovered in their bank accounts and possession of palatial private properties.

Enable discovered a problem with the DNSSD accounts, from which the embezzlement was eventually discovered, in 2006. When Arulraj and Paulinraj failed to give an adequate reply to queries, as Enable's General Secretary I contacted the Bishop of Nellore, then the Most Rev. P.C. Balaswamy, seeking his intervention.  With his encouragement and support I presented the evidence of criminal wrongdoing to the police in June 2006. Bishop Balaswamy gave strong support to Enable's attempts to justly resolve the problem with the two priests.  When Arulraj and Paulinraj abandoned hundreds of children for whom they had assumed responsibility, Bishop Balaswamy asked for (and received) Enable's assistance so that the Diocese would be able to support a number of them.

In December 2006, Bishop Balaswamy's long-overdue retirement (several years after the expected Bishops' retirement age of 75) was accepted and a successor, Bishop Doraboina Moses Prakasam, was appointed. To say that Enable's Board of Trustees (including myself) are "disappointed" with the way Bishop Prakasam has addressed the scandal involving his two priests would be a charitable understatement.

Some details of what happened in 2006-2007 and subsequently will be described in other posts.

Having kept a low profile for a  few years Arulraj re-emerged in February 2012, presenting himself as Director of the  New Life Society for the Poor and Handicapped.  On his Linked-In Profile, Arulraj presents himself as a priest, describing himself as Fr Gali Arulraj, Director at New Life Society for the poor and handicapped, whereas on a website for that "Society", launched in March 2012, he describes himself as Mr. G.A. Raj, Director.

[UPDATE 30 March 2012:  Following the exposure given by this blog the profile and website have already been removed]

The projects described on Arulraj's professionally designed website, for which he is seeking donations, are non-existent. I will describe the scam in subsequent posts. 

This blog has been set up to expose Arulraj's continued scams.  Having experienced Arulraj's deception over a period of many years, I feel a responsibility to warn others of what he is currently doing.  As a Catholic myself,  it is with much regret that I find myself having to expose a consummate scammer who is also a Catholic priest.  The regret is accompanied by considerable dismay that Bishop Prakasam of Nellore has turned a deaf ear to repeated requests, since I first met him in January 2007, for Arulraj's canonical status to be addressed.  The ongoing scandal of the "scammer priest" could so easily have been prevented.