Mahapola Fund another victim of bond scams
Posted on July 1st, 2018

By Rathindra Kuruwita Courtesy The Island

The Mahapola Scholarship Trust Fund, which invested RS. 440 million in Treasury Bonds, had also lost Rs. 18 million due to bond scams, Executive Director of the Centre for Human Rights (CHR) Keerthi Tennakoon told the media yesterday.

“A large number of institutions in the higher education sector have become victims of the bond scams as they have invested heavily in excessively priced bonds,” he said.

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According to current CHR calculations, the loss, incurred by the Mahapola Scholarship Trust Fund, was Rs. 18 million, Tennakoon said. The Trust Fund had purchased the bonds via a state bank and it was another instance of Perpetual Treasuries Limited (PTL) bribing state officials to invest more state funds in the treasury bonds so that it could maximize profits fraudulently, Tennakoon said.

“The government could have funded 270 students for one year at the rate of Rs. 5,500 per month per student, with the money lost due to the bond scams. We wrote to the Mahapola Scholarship Trust Fund and they told us that they had already taken legal action to recover the losses,” the CHR Executive Director said.

Mahapola Scholarship Trust Fund has Rs. 10 billion and over 15,000 students are given Rs. 5,500 each monthly. Last week Tennakoon revealed that the Sri Lankan University system would suffer losses for decades to come due to the University Grants Commission (UGC) investing around Rs. 1 billion in the controversial treasury bond deal.

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