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SriLankan officials still under investigation: Chairman
View(s):SriLankan Airlines officials continue to be questioned by investigators on the previous regime’s controversial decision to lease A350-900 aircraft, and the award of the airport’s Duty-Free tender, its Chairman, Ajith Dias said this week.
Both cases were exposed in the Weliamuna Report which accused SriLankan’s top officials and employees of financial misappropriation. “These are being investigated to date and our officers gave information even during the last few weeks,” Mr Dias said.
The Weliamuna Report contains a plethora of allegations against a large number of officials and staff. After the new Board was installed at SriLankan, four Directors- Chairman Ajith Dias, Col. Sunil Peiris, Mahinda Haradasa and Rakitha Jayawardena- questioned nine Senior Managers and two others, regarding the charges.
“We spoke with the main people who were in the company at the time, and went over everything,” Mr Dias said. “We got written statements and took certain actions such as demoting some people. However, we couldn’t find where they could have personally benefited financially. A lot of what they did was under peer pressure.”
But the Board did not question two of the main actors- former Chairman Nishantha Wickremesinghe and Chief Executive Officer Kapila Jayaratne. “They had left by then,” Mr Dias said, rejecting criticism they had not acted on the Weliamuna Report. “We checked into every one of them (allegations) and remedial action taken.”
The disciplinary steps that management implemented, on the basis of these inquiries, were endorsed by the Committee on Economic Management comprising high-level officials. “We had several meetings and submitted to them what we had done, at the end of which, they wrote back saying they were satisfied,” he said.
Mr Dias also said that SriLankan Airlines had volunteered a fee of Rs 3.5 million for the Weliamuna Report, of which, Chrishantha Weliamuna only received Rs 600,000, while the balance was divided among his team, with receipts as proof.
Two ministers- Arjuna Ranatunga and Reginald Cooray- referred the Weliamuna Report to the Attorney General’s (AG) Dept. “The AG’s Dept did not get back to us,” Mr Dias said. “I suppose the protocol is to revert to the respective ministers.”
(Pls. see story in Business Times)