Issues relating to Standard Credit Finance
View(s):Reference the article in last week’s Business Times headlined “Slow death awaits desperate depositors of failed finance companies”, Noel Fernando of the Action Team of Depositors of the Standard Credit Finance Ltd (SCFL) has written to say that the names indicated in the above mentioned article are not depositors but shareholders of the company under a plan initiated by the Central Bank.
He says the depositors of SCFL have been subjected to absolute unfair treatment by the company due to the fraudulent activities of the past directorate as well as those appointed as managing agents at vital intervals by the regulator.
He claims shareholders, including the former managing agent Entrust Ltd, obtained various forms of considerations including upgrading of shareholdings status from ‘non-voting’ to ‘voting’ status.
Mr. Fernando told the Business Times that he along with three others – S. Imbulana, Ms Lakshmi Thenuwara and Amal Fernando were the people who started the ‘Action Team of the Depositors’ which now has about 3,600 members.
He said “We are the people who started and what happened was that after the Central Bank proposed to convert their deposits into shares and those people got separated from other depositors, they worked as a separate team. We were depositors. We never converted our deposits into shares.”
He said that they have instituted a fundamental rights case against the Central Bank and it is now being heard in the Supreme Court.
Business Editor notes: We may have erred in calling the group identified in the article as shareholders. However as far as the paper is concerned Noel Fernando and the others have not contacted us in the past and never organised any protest and demonstrations seeking their rights, unlike the group referred to.