News - Big urea scandal: Is VVIP’s son burying it?

More than a month after a three-man committee that looked into the irregular Rs 892 million dollar urea deal submitted its report to the President’s Office, no follow up action has been taken so far to take those responsible to task.Only two members of the personal staff of Agricultural Development Minister Chamal Rajapaksa were sacked after the fraud came to light but no action has been taken against the others alleged to be involved in the deal including other senior officials as well as political higher ups.

JVP MP Anura Kumara Dissanayake who initially raised the question of the multi-million rupee fraudulent urea deal too has fallen silent on the matter despite accusing the Government in Parliament in June of covering up a massive fraud. Minister Nimal Siripala De Silva told Parliament in June that all those who were connected to the deal, whatever the position they held, would be dealt with but since then the whole matter has been hushed up.

Now there are new allegations flying that the reason for the investigation drying up is because the man behind the sordid deal happens to be a VVIP’s son who had allegedly given instructions to the Ministry Secretary to go ahead with the transaction.

The deal had been concluded in the record time of six hours without the permission of a Cabinet appointed tender board, a fact admitted by Minister De Silva in his statement to Parliament.

Meanwhile Transammonia, Switzerland the company which was awarded the tender has agreed to refund $10 per metric ton in order to get the balance 25% from the Letter of Credit proceeds which the Ceylon Fertilizer Corporation (CFC) is holding, as payment terms of the tender, that 75% payment is made upon shipment and balance after discharge of the cargo in Colombo.

Even this concession has been extracted only because of the intervention of the three-man committee headed by the Prime Minister’s Secretary M. Bandusena who had held that Transammonia's price in the first place should have been at $298 per MT for bagged urea which was the price at which CFC bought bagged urea from another party in a tender at about the same time.

However the parity does not add up.

CFC bought this cargo (27,500 MT) at $327 per MT of bulk urea CFR Colombo. On the same day Transammonia sold 60,000MT to state owned MMTC (Metal & Minerals Trading Corpn.) in India at $264.50 per MT CFR Mundra. Further, on top of the $327per MT paid, the CFC would have incurred $12 per MT for bagging the cargo in Colombo thus costing a minimum of $339 per MT bagged equivalent.