Several government institutions this week were directed by the Supreme Court to investigate the oil hedging transactions entered into by the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) and five banks and to take action against any individuals found to have committed, aided or abetted any offences.
The court granted this interim order cited in the fundamental rights petition on the hedging contracts filed by former PERC Chairman Nihal Sri Ameresekere on Tuesday. The interim order in the petition called for the Controller of Exchange, the Central Bank’s Director of Bank Supervision, the Chairman of the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery of Corruption, the Director of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and the Attorney General to carry out investigations and take action in terms of the applicable law.
The bench, comprising Justices Shiranee Thilakawardene, P.A. Ratnayake and S.I. Imam, allowed the respondents, who were represented by their lawyers, until July 7 to submit additional documents by affidavit to the Court. Mr. Ameresekere will have one week thereafter to file his submissions. According to the petition filed last week, the hedging deals entered into by the CPC and Standard Chartered Bank, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Commercial Bank and People’s Bank, are a ‘schemingly and manipulatively well conceived fraud intentionally and knowingly perpetrated on the CPC and the people of the country.’
The petition states the fraudulent deals has caused irremediable mischief and irreparable loss and damage, if not appropriately dealt with in terms of the law.
The petition further states that it appears Standard Chartered Bank had been either the ‘lead Bank’ or ‘initiator’ in securing the questionable deals and had induced the CPC, its former Chairman and others involved into unsuspectingly entering the deals which is conduct unbecoming and unworthy of a professional bank.
The public officers mentioned in the petition are former CPC Chairman, Asantha De Mel, former CPC Deputy Finance Manager P.M.L. Karunaratne, People’s Bank officer K. Ariyaratne who was also a member of the committee appointed by the then Secretary to the Ministry of Finance & Planning which had submitted a report titled ‘Oil Hedging Report of the Study Group’ and People’s Bank officer Vasantha Kumar. |
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