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BOI approves deal with investor despite probe
The Board of Investment (BOI) has approved a deal backed by a Saudi Arabian investor who is also the director of a company that bought the Edirisinghe Group businesses — a transaction now being investigated by a Presidential Commission of Inquiry.
The reportedly US$ 97.2mn agreement to set up a floating liquefied natural gas storage unit off Hambantota was signed this week between the BOI and Pearl Energy, the project company. Its Director Tania Siegertsz said her entity was backed by Omar Siraj, a Saudi Arabia-based investor.
It is not clear where funds for the project will come from. Ms Siegertsz, who reportedly founded an interiors firm called TS Designs, has been a director of Pearl Energy since July this year. According to the internet, she also worked at APL Logistics International in Colombo.
Omar Siraj M Qandeel is also a director of the Singapore-registered Blue Summit Capital Management Ltd which formed a consortium with Ben Holdings (Pvt) Ltd to purchase several Edirisinghe Group companies. In January, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa set up a Commission to determine, among other things, whether the sale of these assets had violated any of the laws prohibiting the purchase of immovable properties by foreigners.
Mr Qandeel has longstanding ties with R M Manivannan, Chairman of Supreme Global Holdings and head of SupremeSAT which claimed to have launched Sri Lanka’s first communications satellite in 2012. In 2017, they set up two new companies named SupremeSat Japan (Pvt) Ltd and Supreme Innovation (Pvt) Ltd.
Mr Qandeel is listed in documents lodged with the Registrar of Companies (ROC) as Saudi Arabian. His address is given as 3 Temasek Avenue, #26-03, Centennial Tower, Singapore 039190. This was the same address used by Rohitha Rajapaksa, youngest son of the Prime Minister, when he purportedly registered a company named Dycer International in Singapore.
The Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority of Singapore has no record of this entity. There is, however, a Dycer International with the identical registration number provided to Sri Lanka’s ROC incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. Dycer held a ten percent stake in SupremeSAT but divested those shares in June 2016.
The present shareholders of SupremeSAT are Supreme Global Holdings (Pvt) Ltd chaired by Mr Manivannan and J S Energy Holdings (Pvt) Ltd owned by Jaya Sudhir Jayaram, a Malaysian businessman fixer who was negotiating on behalf of Lycamobile Chairman Allirajah Subaskaran for a stake in the Edirisinghe Group through a venture called Straits Grid Pte Ltd.
J S Energy was also first registered to 3 Temasek Avenue, #26-03, Centennial Tower, Singapore 039190.