Depositors of another failed Ceylinco-connected firm say CB yet to give back their dues
View(s):Long-suffering depositors of the Standard Credit Finance Co, one of the companies that collapsed in the crash of the Ceylinco empire many years ago, have once again urged the Central Bank (CB) to consider paying them similar to the current payment exercise involving Golden Key (GK). In a letter to the CB Governor copied to the President and the media among others, Lakshman C. Moraes from the Deposit Protection Society of the Standard Credit Finance Co, said:
“March 22 marks the completion of five years since the depositors of the Standard Credit Finance Co (TSCFC) were directed by the Monetary Board of the Central Bank (CB) to convert a minimum of 68 per cent of their deposits into shares on the day. On 22-03-2011 a MOU was signed between TSCFC and Entrust Ltd at the CB and with their blessings in the presence of the then Asst. Governor, and now Senior Deputy Governor, P. Samarasiri, and H.M. Ekanayake, then Additional Director,
Department of Supervision of Non-Banking Financial Institutions, the facts of which we possess eyewitness and photographic evidence, assuring us that we will be able to convert our shares into liquid cash by September 2011. With this carrot dangled before us most of us reluctantly consented to the proposal given by the Monetary Board, and a good number of us trustingly even converted 100 per cent of our deposits into shares.
Now to our utter chagrin, after five long years, we find that we are still at square one, and that all this while we have been taken for a right royal ride by the CB and its cohorts. 85 per cent of us are Senior Citizens, and do you want us to wait for another five years? Can’t you arrange to pay back our monies in tranches of 25 per cent starting the first tranche before Sinhala New Year just like the Treasury is repaying depositors in the Golden Key Co: which unlike TSCFC is not a CB Registered Finance Co?”