Investors in robes

I am not a cafeteria or broadminded Catholic picking and choosing beliefs, but a Catholic devoted to the traditional teachings of the Church and read with sadness the essay Investors In Robes written with care and learning about the scam at Golden Key in The Sunday Leader of March 22, 2009. It noted that the Bishop of Ratnapura had deposited Rs. 40 million and the Bishop of Chilaw Rs. 8 million.

The bishops seem to have received with the right hand the alms of the poor and gambled them with the left. Also mentioned was a deposit of Rs 4.75 million by the Bishops’ Conference.

This is a hydra-headed anonymous body, cobbled together after Vatican II to thwart the independence of bishops and to hide the identity of perverse bishops. How the tax authorities who are chasing the Golden Key depositors to collect the tax on earned interest, are going to collect from such a will-o-the-wisp, boggles the mind.

I do not know Kotelawala. Neither have I seen or met him. I came to know of his existence in a tangential way after a highly partisan and full blown statement appeared in the papers under the hand of the Archbishop of Colombo before the presidential election and in bold lines reminding the reader it was funded by Kotelawala. The statement was unjust, biased and could have come only from the pencil of a sophist with a clear axe to grind.

It is with sadness I remember that the dioceses of Ratnapura and Chilaw and the Archdiocese of Colombo were once the domain of saintly and brilliant men like Laudadio, Edmund Pieris and Cardinal Cooray.

With difficulty I got a copy of The Sunday Leader, the last among the abundance of other Sunday papers. With all the interesting things it is a collectors’ item. Like a hermit scanning the log tables I perused the "Swindler’s List" and discovered that one of my friends had lost his savings. I tremble at the thought he might approach me for a soft loan.

I am a reader of your esteemed journal The Sunday Leader from the very inception.

I invested a sum of Rs.150, 000 in a fixed deposit for a period of three years on September 29, 2009 with Ceylinco Investment and Realty Ltd. on the understanding that I would be paid the interest monthly. The company paid me the interest as agreed, up to January 2009, and thereafter stopped making any payment.

I brought this matter to the notice of Director, Supervision of Non­Bank Financial Institutions, Central Bank on two occasions, but have not had a single reply from him.

I am a 77 year old retired CTB employee and the money I invested was the Provident Fund money that I received. The investment was made to earn some interest to supplement my living expenses. I am now in great difficulty because I neither get the interest nor the money I invested. I’m now in financial difficulty and would like to recover whatever is due to me early.

I would be most thankful if you could kindly publish this letter, so that it would catch the eyes of the relevant authorities. A lot of people like me who lost their money are suffering in silence.

I sincerely hope that this letter would be published in The Sunday Leader which stands up for the rights of the poor and the innocent people of this country.

I fully endorse the letter published in The Sunday Leader recently under the caption "Eastern Education Ministry — a home for the aged" and congratulate the writer for exposing such irregularity and The Sunday Leader for exposing the mal-administration and violation of Public Administration Circular and the Circular of the Public Service Commission by the provincial administrators.

Not only the Education Ministry, but as stated by the writer, the top administrators such as Chief Secretary, Secretary to the Governor and the Secretary to the Provincial Councils — the three important persons who are responsible for implementing these circulars, advising and directing the governor, chief minister and the provincial council are persons who have been re-employed on ‘contract basis.’ The appointment of these officers is clearly in violation of the circulars referred to, and they are guilty of re-employing other officers without proper authority.

Moreover these three officers have been re-employed blocking the avenues of promotion that should be normally available to eligible Class I officers of the Sri Lanka Administrative Service.

In addition to these wrong re-employments granted by the Provincial Public Service Commission contrary to Public Administration Circular No: 56/89 and the National Public Service Commission Circular No: 1/2008, the Provincial Public Service Commission has issued an invalid appointment to a teacher to cover the duties of the Assistant Director of Cultural Affairs in the Eastern Education Ministry which is a post for an officer of the Sri Lanka Administrative Service. By this act not only has the Public Administration Ministry and National Public Service Commission Circulars been violated, they have also violated the Service Minute of the Sri Lanka Administrative Service.

Unlike the National Public Service Commission which is an independent body, the Provincial Public Service Commission is controlled by the Governor’s Secretariat.

Will the Sri Lanka Administrative Service union take up this question at the national level and safeguard the rights of the SLAS officers?

The governor too should be informed that he should exercise his power within the provisions of Chapter XVLLA of the Constitution of Sri Lanka, without creating problems and embarrassment to the officers of the SLAS.

SLAS Officer

Who will pay the deposits of the affected investors?

Here are a set of questions pertaining to the money deposited by investors with F & G Property Developers. Will some responsible person answer these questions?

What is Deshamanya Lalith Kotelawala doing about returning the depositors’ money invested with F & G Property Developers? What is President Rajapakse and his cabinet of ministers doing about this rip off? What is the Governor of the Central Bank, Nivard Cabraal going to do about the hardships and problems faced by the depositors?

When will Mervyn Jayasinghe and his gang come out of hiding and answer the depositors?

What is the action that the police, the CID and the powers that be, propose to take on the Chief Justice’s statement that Kotelawala must be in jail and not in the Merchant’s Ward? Why is Kotelawala permitted this luxury? He is not the first who is allowed so many VIP visitors.

Why is Mrs. Kotelawala permitted to spend the depositors’ money and live in luxury abroad? With whose monies are the Kotelawalas paying their bills?

When the depositors who have been living on the interest are suffering in hunger and frustration due to the inability to pay their bills, why shouldn’t the Kotelawalas, Pereras, and Jayasinghes too be made to undergo these hardships? I suppose they still have their monies which they have stashed away in foreign bank accounts.

How did Kotelawala open up companies abroad? How were the funds sent abroad? Is there any record of these monies being sent abroad legally? Has Kotelawala contravened exchange control regulations in sending money abroad? What can the government do to wind up these companies and get the monies back to Sri Lanka?

I visited the Head Office of F &G Property Developers and found the office devoid of the ‘top’ people. I heard some had already bolted from Sri Lanka.

I am frustrated, depressed, disgusted and angry with myself for allowing myself to be duped by these thieves. We have heard of farmers committing suicide when they are unable to repay their loans. You may see similar incidents in the Western Province too. God help us all.

Please give us answers through this newspaper at least, so that we can go to the F&G office to find a solution to our problems.

Desperate Suicidal Depositor.

Many appreciations have been written about Lasantha, the fearless writer and editor-in-chief of the Leader Group of Publications, who was brutally killed for being forthright in his thinking and writing according to the dictates of his conscience. He paid the ultimate price for that. I should have made my contribution much earlier, but I just could not bring myself to do so — the shock was indeed terrible and the tragedy yet unbelievable.

Our two families were on very friendly terms for quite a long time, may be about 20-25 years, the children of both families being small and school going. Our house faced Wasala Road while the Wickrematunges’ Bloemendhal Lane, but both houses were adjacent to each other. Lasantha and his brothers would come to our house to play with my children while my children would reciprocate the visit some time later and the visits continued. That precisely was the relationship that existed between the Wickrematunges and Rosairos — a very pleasant relationship indeed.

Lasantha was a Benedictine and so were my sons and this association grew till we parted ways eventually.

It was only after Lasantha became the editor-in-chief of the Leader Group of Publications many years later that I had the pleasure of speaking to him and exchanging pleasantries; and when I disclosed my identity, his memory began unfolding itself into the past and even went to the extent of enquiring about our whereabouts. He even invited me to write to his journal, which unfortunately I never did.

Lasantha was a great man among the greats. As someone said, he was a man in a billion. Quite true. A simple and unassuming person that he was, he even posed as equals with his own employees, and that itself was the greatness of Lasantha — a quality very hard to find among people these days.

It is said that a life once lived, short or long has achieved its full potential ‘like a flower which in itself a unique creation is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness in the desert air.’ But Lasantha, indeed a unique creation will not blush, but will continue to maintain his freshness and sweetness forever, till such time memories hold on.

A new life of fulfillment and happiness has begun for Lasantha, where he now lives in a land of glory, somewhere beyond the sunset.