Behavioural Insights; due diligence on chief exec Ravi Gurumurthy.
Fraud: multiple identities, obfuscation and failure to declare interests.
This due diligence dive into Ravi Gurumurthy was prompted by The Tyranny of 'Nudge' in the The Daily Sceptic, by Dr. Gary Sidley, a retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist and co-founder of the Smile Free campaign. This article was first published on his website Coronababble.
I always thought that journalists did "due diligence" checks on our politicians, and others in control, and brought to light any evidence of transgressions. However, in my opinion, they haven't been scrutinising Registers of Interests and Companies House effectively. As I have been finding that often senior civil servants and politicians are directors of companies that they fail to declare, because they are a conflict of interest. For example the company Behavioural Insights Ltd, which has David Halpern amongst the directors, is registered in Companies House, please click on this link to see the directors of BEHAVIOURAL INSIGHTS LTD - GOV.UK (company-information.service.gov.uk) in Companies House.
From the Behavioural Insights company website, we can see that this company uses the copyright name Behavioural Insights Team (BI Team) and in December 2021 they became "wholly-owned by innovation charity Nesta", Who we are | The Behavioural Insights Team (bi.team). The BI Team biography for director Ravi Gurumurthy provides no information on his role or his other interests, Ravi Gurumurthy | The Behavioural Insights Team (bi.team).
His biography on the Nesta website, Ravi Gurumurthy | Nesta is more forthcoming:
"Ravi Gurumurthy is Group Chief Executive Officer, joining Nesta as Chief Executive in December 2019. Ravi was previously responsible for the International Rescue Committee’s work in designing, testing and scaling products and services for people affected by crisis in over 40 countries - from reducing acute malnutrition and intimate partner violence, to expanding employment for Syrian refugees.
Prior to joining the International Rescue Committee in 2013, Ravi held a number of roles in the UK Government, including Director of Strategy at the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change and as a strategic advisor to the Foreign Secretary.
Across many departments, Ravi led a number of major social and environmental reforms including the development of the world’s first legally-binding carbon emissions targets and the integration of children’s services. Ravi has also worked as a researcher at the think-tank Demos and in local government in London."
Cross-referencing this with his appointments in Companies House:
Ravi Krishnan GURUMURTHY personal appointments
Total number of appointments 3 Date of birth May 1977
BEHAVIOURAL INSIGHTS LTD (08567792) Company status Active Correspondence address 58 Victoria Embankment, Temple, London, England, EC4Y 0DS Role ACTIVE Director Appointed on 10 December 2021 Occupation Chief Executive Officer
THE HEALTH FOUNDATION (01714937) Company status Active Correspondence address 8 Salisbury Square, London, England, EC4Y 8AP Role ACTIVE Director Appointed on 12 March 2021 Occupation Chief Executive Of Nesta
ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND UK (09217493) Company status Active correspondence address 3rd Floor, 41 Eastcheap, London, England, EC3M 1DT Role ACTIVE Director Appointed on 19 November 2020 Occupation Chief Executive Officer.
Ravi Gurumurthy fails to declare in his biography that he his is an active director of Behavioural Insights Ltd, The Health Foundation and the Environmental Defence Fund UK.
There is more. If you search on his name in Companies House, Ravi Krishnan GURUMURTHY you see that he has 3 identities registered with the same name and date of birth. Multiple identities are the result of an error in the deduplication process, you can call them synthetic identities or clone identities. Lawyers and accountants, in the know, have been keeping quiet about the illegal use of multiple identities, since Companies House opened. Multiple identities corrupt audits and due diligence by concealing interests.
In identity 2, Ravi Krishnan GURUMURTHY personal appointments he is an active director of NESTA ENTERPRISES LIMITED (08580327) and NESTA PRI LIMITED (08232090), appointed on 21 May 2020.
In identity 3 Ravi Krishnan GURUMURTHY personal appointments: NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR VOLUNTARY YOUTH SERVICES (04385383) Director Appointed on 17 October 2002 Resigned on 2 November 2006.
Ravi Gurumurthy fails to disclose active directorships of NESTA Enterprises Limited, NESTA Pri Limited and his background with National Council for Voluntary Youth Services.
Identities are established in Companies House using three pieces of information; name, date of birth and usual residential address. Since Mr Gurumurthy’s name, month and year of birth are consistent in each identity, we can deduce that he: either gave a different spellings of his usual residential address, or, he used a different day of birth, or, a mixture of both strategies, to force a non-match error. Because this results in Companies House creating a duplicate identity, by mistake.
If the individual has failed to declare interests held in another identity, I allege that this is evidence that they created the duplicate identity deliberately, to conceal the interest. Therefore, multiple identities and failure to declare interests is evidence of fraud by false representation and fraud by failing to disclose information.
The accounts for these companies fail to acknowledge their related interests. For example, the accounts located in NESTA ENTERPRISES LIMITED filing history neither mention that it is controlling party of Behavioural Insights Team nor state the names of the other companies in the group.
Allegations regarding Ravi Gurumurthy
Ravi Gurumurthy fails to disclose his active directorships of: Behavioural Insights Ltd, The Health Foundation, Environmental Defence Fund UK, Nesta Enterprises and Nesta Pri Limited and his past directorship of National Council for Voluntary Youth Services, neither in the accounts of these companies nor on the official company information platforms, the websites of Nesta and Behavioural Insight Team.
Because multiple identities conceal the other interests from audits and due diligence software on any one identity, Ravi Gurumurthy has corrupted audits since he established his second identity for his directorship to Nesta Enterprises and Nesta Pri Limited on 21 May 2020. I allege that Ravi Gurumurthy committed fraud by false representation on 21 May 2020 and 19 November 2020 when he established his second and third identity in Companies House.