Dublin Indian Mayor Baby Pereppadan and with Indian Expat From Ireland Babu Vallooran embezzled money by Nursing Recruiting,: Irish media Report

Dublin Indian Mayor Baby Pereppadan  and with Indian Expat From Ireland Babu Valooran embezzled money by Nursing Recruiting,: Irish media Report

Irish media reports have alleged that Baby Pereppadan, a Fine Gael councillor who recently served as mayor of South Dublin, charged Indian nurses thousands of euros in "agency fees" to come and work in Irish nursing homes.

Baby Pereppadan, a long-time Fine Gael member and local representative for Tallaght South, founded a limited company called "Angel Care Consultancy Limited" in 2022 with businessman Babu Valooran Kochu Varki. Also a Fine Gael councillor, Baby Pereppadan is the owner and shareholder of the recruitment company.

The Journal Investigates reported that it spoke to three nurses who said that Angel Care Consultancy Ltd was paid thousands of euros in agency fees, in addition to the standard costs nurses face when coming to Ireland, including fees related to their visas, work permits, Royal College of Surgeons Ireland (RCSI) aptitude tests, English language proficiency tests and their plane tickets. Part of the recruitment fee demanded from one of the nurses was transferred to the bank account of Baby’s son, Britto Perepadan, who is also a Fine Gael councillor, Tallaght.

Irish law states:

Under legislation introduced in Ireland in 2012, it is illegal for an employment agency to require an applicant to pay an agency fee in connection with employment. 

The Protection of Employees (Temporary Agency Work) Act 2012 states that an employment agency must not charge “any personal fee for making any arrangement for the employment of that person.” It states that anyone who does so is guilty of an offence and liable, on summary conviction, to a Class A fine.

The 2012 law stems from the EU Temporary Agency Workers Directive 2008, which states that "agencies shall not charge workers any fees for arranging for a user undertaking to recruit workers or for terminating a contract or employment relationship."

In response to several questions from The Journal Investigate, Baby Pereppadan claimed that he knew nothing about the agency fees being charged to the three nurses.

"I have no knowledge of the allegations regarding the charging of agency fees to nurses, and I was shocked to learn about them if these claims are true. I am not involved in the day-to-day operations of the company and I was not informed about the charging of additional fees," Baby Pereppadan said in an initial response to the Journal Investigate. He also claimed that he received a 50% ownership stake in the company as a gesture of goodwill from Valuran, the company's co-founder. 

When The Journal Investigates asked Pereppadan about evidence that he represented Angel Care in a business transaction with an employer last year, he did not respond to requests for comment. He said he had not been involved in financial transactions with nurses in India on behalf of Angel Care.

Businessman Babu Vallooran Kochuvarki told the Journal Investigate that this was the entire amount charged to the nurses for application-related expenses such as exam fees, work permits, visa payments, accommodation in Dublin and transport, as the nurses went through the ten-day RCSI examination process. He said the charges paid by the nurses were accepted. “All payments were made with full transparency and communication,” he said. “Furthermore, I would like to confirm that we did not charge any service fee to the nursing home for recruiting these candidates.”

During that ten-day period, the three nurses each paid hundreds of euros to an Indian host family for accommodation, a SIM card and travel expenses. 

The Journal Investigates has seen documents showing the details of how much they paid for each of these expenses. This was put to Vallooran, but he did not respond to requests for comment. The nurses also provided details of money they had paid separately for exam fees and visa fees. Valooran said he would discuss further with one of the nurses regarding a refund request. The three nurses contacted Vallooran by phone while he was being appointed as a representative for Angel Care, and made bank transfers or cash payments at his direction.  

A nurse paid the equivalent of €3,000 into the account of Britto Pereppadan, the son of Baby, a Fine Gael councillor in the Tala Central local electoral area. The Journal Investigates has seen a bank slip for this transaction, messages showing Britto's bank account details were given to Valouran, and a bank statement matching the amount ordered to be transferred.

Britto Pereppadan told the Journal Investigate that Valooran had given him a personal loan and that he did not know how he got the money, and that he had referred to a transfer that Valooran had made to him specifically. Britto has no official connection with the company. 

But Baby Pereppadan is the owner and shareholder of Angel Care, but in 2023, she resigned as a director on the same day that her daughter, a 22-year-old dentistry graduate, was registered as a director. Baby Pereppadan has said that the appointment of her daughter as a director was “nominal” and “administrative” and that she has no role in the company beyond using her name in the position. 

Baby, who lost for the first time in 2009, was elected three times from Tala South. After campaigning, he finally won the Kashtichhu seat. His son was also elected to the local body for the first time and is a doctor working at Tala University Hospital. 

The complainants filed a complaint with the Gardaí and the Indian Police:

The nurse who transferred the money to an Indian account in Britto’s name told the Journal Investigative that she insisted on paying the agency fee through the bank, but first asked Valooran to pay. Ananya (not her real name) claims that Britto told her that he was her cousin who lives in Kerala and that Valooran told her. He also asked her to transfer the equivalent of €597 to a bank account in her own name. 

Ananya told the Journal Investigate that she realised when she arrived in Ireland that charging this fee was not permitted under Irish employment law. Ananya said she had lodged a complaint with the authorities in India, who had referred the matter to the state police chief in the region. Two other nurses, Sabina and Jinsi (not their real names), say they paid the agency fee in cash directly to a person in Kerala via WhatsApp, at Valuran’s direction.  

A complaint has also been made to the Gardaí about the agency. Journal Investigates understands through their investigations that Baby Pereppadan is also supporting another agency to recruit nurses from India to Ireland. This included attending at least one meeting with a potential client in Dublin, at which he said he had worked with an agent at the agency for four years. 

At a meeting with a potential client in July, Perepadan said his political connections would help him secure work permits for potential employees to speed up the recruitment process. He also claimed to be very close to Tánaiste and Fine Gael leader Simon Harris. He said Angel Care had experienced some ‘difficulties’, although he did not elaborate on what these were. .

Ananya paid €2,800 for the aptitude test fee, €226.30 for her extraordinary work visa, and €118.55 for the VFS fee (a standard charge for nurses in India to work abroad). She then paid around €3,589 in agency fees to come here at Angel Care – €3,000 of which was paid into Britto Pereppadan’s account in India. 

The rest of the charges they charged, apart from the agency fee, were normal and legitimate. Coming to work in Ireland as a nurse, doctor or care assistant is an expensive process, and thousands of migrant health workers choose to finance themselves every year, believing that living and working in Ireland is a good opportunity. I took out a loan on my house to pay for all this. My family was not financially stable at the time, but we found the money.

The three nurses the Journal Investigates spoke to were brought in by Angel Care to work at a nursing home and made a collective decision to resign from their positions more than two months ago over working conditions. Ananya says she approached Valooran for help after she resigned along with two other nurses.

In the days after our resignation, he was supportive and said, 'Don't worry, we'll find you another job,' but after a certain point he never called or texted, and never reached out to me with updates about potential jobs for me.

"With the support of Migrant Nurses Ireland and the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), I have now been able to find new employment after two months," she said. 

Sabina, another nurse, said that following her experience at the nursing home and her resignation, she asked Valooran to refund the agency fee. 

“At first, he said ‘yes, I will return it’, but after that there was no message or response, I did not get my money back,” the nurse claimed. Valooran told the Journal Investigate that he tried to support these nurses but was unable to “secure immediate alternative appointments”. He said he had always acted in good faith to help candidates and was committed to “clearing up any misunderstandings”. Sabina claimed that she had not been to Valooran to find out how the nurses were struggling without work for the past two months. “It is difficult to survive here. It is difficult to find accommodation and pay without any work. The agency has not asked if we are okay or if we need any help, nothing,” she said. The nurse claims that in February this year she paid Valooran’s “cousin” ₹304,500 in agency fees in Kerala, which is equivalent to around €3,020. 

She said she had no problem paying the fee because her English language qualification was about to expire and she needed to get a job offer letter before then. “The money I gave to Mr. Brito [Pereppadan] was a personal loan for expenses, not a business-related transaction. I transferred the money I received from India to pay off my debt. He was fully aware of this arrangement,” Valuran told the Journal Investigate. Ananya and Sabina said they paid for their own plane tickets and that these were not included in the agency fee. 

The third nurse, Jinsi, paid ₹309,500 (equivalent to €3,068.70) in cash as agency fees in India. 

It is understood that Jinsi informed Valooran of the expenses she had to pay over the phone and that she sent a message confirming the amounts, including the agency fee. After handing over the money in cash, Valooran sent her a message to say "received". "I am very sad that I spent so much money to come here and I have suffered a lot since then," she told the Journal Investigate. 

Ireland's healthcare and nursing workforce is increasingly international, and they are increasingly reliant on Indian nurses working here to provide care to nursing homes, hospitals and care facilities. The high fees charged to migrant healthcare workers to come and work in homes and centres in Western countries is a well-known phenomenon, and there have been several investigations into the issue in the UK, including by the BBC and the Observer, and statements from unions calling for the government to take action to stop "exploitation" by employers and middlemen.

Credit: https://www.thejournal.ie/investigates-fine-gael-nurse-agency-fees