Golden Key directors duping others?
View(s):It appears that the poor traumatised depositors of the defunct Golden Key Co (GK) who were defrauded by its former chairman Lalith Kotelawala and his minions once before are to be let down again.
Two weeks ago when the newspapers were full of the story that Kotelawela’s secret shares of 50 per cent in Ciesot Co were unearthed and transferred by the Supreme Court to the GK depositors, Ms. Dushyanthi Hapugoda, director of the GK board basked in the glory taking full credit for the discovery.
File picture of GK depositors outside the Supreme Court.
She proclaimed that now the GK depositors could be paid solid cash; the full 41 per cent of their lost deposits.
However, now a different and uglier picture has emerged. It appears that the dreams of Ms. Hapugoda and her partner at the GK Depositors Association of becoming permanent directors of Ciesot enjoying all the perks of those posts including additional salaries and other emoluments and cars, etc has become a reality.
Not only Ciesot but of all other Kotelawela shareholdings including the Ceylinco ENT Hospital and other holdings that may be unearthed even in future.
In return, the depositors’ representative directors will ‘magnanimously’ transfer to us starving depositors 2/3rds of the 41 per cent of our security deposits in worthless shares of GK Co.
GK depositors are well aware of other depositors of Ceylinco Group companies like The Finance Co, etc similarly went bankrupt and the depositors accepted shares under duress.
All these shares simply plummeted on the share market in price and overnight become worthless or nearly worthless. What is being transferred to GK depositors are not Ciesot shares which have value of billions of rupees; they are only miserable GK shares which belong to a company that is unlikely to resurrect itself even in decades. What are the qualifications of Dushyanthi Hapugoda and Wasantha Gunathilake (the other director) to resurrect a firm that has been dead for several years even before the financial collapse of GK.
Further it is now revealed that the secret Ciesot shareholding was unearthed not by these two directors but by a dedicated team of a depositors representative committee led by depositors Marco Perera and Malcom De Silva who have the documents to prove it. This depositors’ representative committee due to its proven track record has been tasked by the President and the Supreme Court with sitting with GK directors and assisting them to present to court details of other assets of Kotelawala as well as his other hidden shareholdings and to turn these assets into cash.
But Ms. Hapugoda has not even by courtesy to the President followed these directives. She has merely given an interview to a newspaper which is a snub to the President of Sri Lanka.
I urge all GK depositors to demand of the GK Board that we don’t want worthless GK shares. We demand that all assets and shareholdings be turned into solid cash as assumed by the Supreme Court after transparent liquidation and the proceeds paid to depositors.
To achieve this objective we demand that the depositors representative committee be consulted as they have proven expertise recognised by the highest executive and judicial authorities.
Mervin Perera
Golden Key Depositor
Colombo