CEYPETCO official to appear before Presidential Commission over Rs 65 m fraud case

A Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CEYPETCO) official has been asked to give evidence before the Presidential Commission probing state sector corruption over a fraud which had resulted in losses worth Rs 65 million to the state body.

S. Ratnayake, an officer at the Finance Division of CEYPETCO, is expected to give evidence over the losses which had been caused due a series of unauthorised entries into a computer system of the corporation.

A complaint had been filed against A.L Ananda, an assistant sales manager, who is alleged to have caused losses by deleting records of invoices which had been issued to petrol station owners who had been chosen in violation of the due procedure.

These records had been deleted from the Systems Applications and Products (SAP) system which tracks transactions between a customer and a company.

According to the complainant, Mr. Ananda had used D.N.M. Ranatunga, a technician by profession and currently attached to the Galle Divisional Secretariat, to unlawfully enter into the SAP system and delete the records.