THE VISA SCAM IN SRI LANKA Part 6
Posted on October 24th, 2025
KAMALIKA PIERIS
In July 2024 the Parliamentary Committee on Public Finance (COPF) was asked to look into the GBS-IVS-VFS matter . COPF conducted a formal, detailed inquiry into the appointment of the VSF Global Consortium as the authorized representatives for online visa applications to Sri Lanka COPF issued a damning 640-page report titled Outsourcing Online Visa and Passport Application Services between the Consortium and the Department of Immigration and migration of Sri Lanka
on July 12 2024. see
https://www.parliament.lk/uploads/comreports/1720771221058053.pdf
COPF found many abuses in the handling of this offer. To start with, the contract was awarded without a competitive bidding process and without specifications, preventing the Department from securing the best offer. COPF observed that the visa fees charged by other countries were much lower. Further, an exclusive contract with VFS Global for a 16-year duration could lead to Vendor Lock-In as well.
COPF pointed out that there were serious lapses in obtaining Parliament approval for VFS. The Consortium Outsourcing Agreement grants exclusive rights to the Consortium , but this exclusivity was not mentioned in the Cabinet Memorandum of September 8, 2023. This was a serious misrepresentation, said COPF.
The cabinet had been told that they would get 200 million US dollars to upgrade our system. But there is no such mention in the Agreement. The documents sent to Attorney General for approval did not include the annexures.
Cabinet Memorandum dated September 8, 2023, and the Consortium’s evaluation report both stated that IVS-GBS Global Services operates in 145 countries. However, during COPF proceedings, it emerged that IVS-GBS currently serves only three governments ,India, Malaysia, and Greece.
COPF found many defects in the text of the agreement as well. Here are two. Data protection was not satisfactory. The measures taken to safeguard sensitive information from potential breaches and to protect accessibility to data were weak.
The Agreement lacked a Clause establishing the order of precedence in the case of conflicting provisions. Which is the superseding clause. Is it Clause 7.3 in the Consortium Outsourcing Agreement or Clause 1.2.2 of Annexure 2 asked COPF.
The intelligentsia and the media also commented at length on the VFS agreement. Why get into a 16-year contract when the world of IT and AI is changing fast. There are already unmanned immigration counters in many airports. Most documents and applications are now machine processed. It is predicted that most back-office work will become redundant in the near future, said Sirimewan Dharmaratne.
The three MPs who petitioned the Supreme Court against the VFS venture, held a press conference.
The simple practice of vetting the unsolicited proposal was not done , they said . We have clearly told the Supreme Court there was no proper due diligence on these companies. Also, the authorities have not revealed important information such as the shareholding of each company in this joint venture .
The intelligentsia also commented. The presentations made to Parliament are not known to the public. They should be made public along with VFS’s unsolicited proposal. Parliament has a right to ask for them for review and debate, and the Speaker has the obligation to get them tabled in Parliament by the Minister, they said.
There was no Technical Committee or Cabinet Appointed Negotiation Committee for the VFS deal, though a Negotiation Committee had been appointed for the Mobitel proposal of November 2020 .
An Evaluation Committee was appointed but it did not have the technical skills needed to evaluate VFS’s offer. Of the five members, one represented the Treasury, one was from Ministry of Public Administration and the remaining three were from the Ministry ,including its Chief Financial Officer and the Commissioner of Immigration, Harsha Illukpitiya. Critics noted that the VFS agreement had been finalized before the Evaluation Committee had submitted its report.
Critics laughed at one of the functions to be carried out by the VFS combine. The Cabinet was given a laundry list of the work that VFS would do. One of them really stands out, tourism promotion, said Rajan Philips. Cabinet was told that VFS Global has the ability to promote the tourism industry of Sri Lanka because it has an experienced base in 151 countries.”
Philips hooted at this. Did the government obtain confirmation from any of the 151 countries about the tourism promoting abilities of VFS Global? Why should a visa processing agency be tasked with promoting tourism. And since when did promoting tourism become a mandate for the Controller General of Immigration he asked.
However, the item went through. Responsibility for promoting inbound tourism to Sri Lanka has now been awarded to the VFS Global consortium on an exclusive basis, said Rohan Pethiyagoda. Controller of Immigration with no authority from Cabinet, with no consultation with the tourism industry, and possibly without the consent of Tourism Minister , has signed away the rights to tourism promotion in Sri Lanka for the next 16 years to GBS-IVS-VFS, which has no known capacity in this highly specialized field. The giant tourism operator Kuoni is a co-owner of VFS , creating an immediate conflict-of-interest, Pethiyagoda said.
The Immigration Department distanced itself from Mobitel once VFS came on the scene. Mobitel said it received minimal feedback from Immigration when it submitted proposals in August 2023 . Mobitel also found it difficult to obtain clear system requirements from them.
After the Supreme Court order Mobitel wrote to the Controller General of Immigration saying it could restore the ETA front-end system within 24 hours if the Immigration Department activates several backend links that would allow it to go online. Immigration Department only had to provide connectivity, nothing more. Immigration Department did not oblige.
Mobitel said that they had sent their technicians to the Department of Immigration after the Court order , but the technicians were given access only to the Front End of the system not to the Back End.
Informatics Ltd had developed new links for the VFS system. Mobitel asked Immigration Department to instruct Informatics to return to the back end services, the network configuration, and other facilities that were active as of April 16 .
Immigration Department did not respond to any of this. Controller of Immigration ignored the Supreme Court Order. Immigration officials said they had received no instructions from Controller of Immigration ,Illukpitiya to enforce the Court’s directive.
The President of the Sri Lanka Immigration and Emigration Officers’ Association said that Immigration had switched to the new VFS e-visa system within five hours . They should be able to do the same in reverse. Informatics had also confirmed that the switch could be done in 48 hours.
Critics rejected the excuses offered by the Ministry for rejecting Mobitel and replacing it with VFS. Ministry said that the change from ETA to VFS processing was prompted by complaints from tourists about Mobitel ETA, and the need for addressing long-standing issues. According to the Minister, such complaints were even directed to President Ranil Wickremesinghe. But this is not the assessment of anyone in the in the tourism business, nor has this been the experience of travelers in general including this writer, said Rajan Philips.Quite a number of people owning private tourism businesses have also spoken out in favor of the old system..
Critics wanted Mobitel back. Sri Lankan software companies are outstanding by world standards. It is their software that drives the stock exchanges of London, Italy and South Africa, they said.
The Mobitel ETA had run smoothly from 2012 without major breakdowns, negative publicity, data breaches or any other complaints. It seems to have managed well up to 16th April , including the peak arrivals of the winter months.
The updated system prepared in August 2023 addressed all of the Immigration Department requirements. Features like risk profiling, passenger name records, and advance passenger information, present in Mobitel’s updated proposal, were absent from the Consortium’s proposal., they added. Further, Mobitel had offered to provide the updated ETA platform for USD 1 per application, in stark contrast to the USD 25.77 charged by VFS, said critics.
Motives for the VFS change were speculated on. This is a deliberate attempt to sabotage tourism, said the Tourist industry. Tourism had come out of a lean phase and was looking forward to a successful winter run. They were also expecting good bookings for the Esala season in Kandy. VFS knocked out the popular 30 day visa, and also harassed the tourists in many ways. The industry feared cancellations.
Why did the government want to hurriedly change a scheme that was working perfectly and at such low cost, asked critics. The answer is because VFS wanted to make money using our Tourist Industry and found willing accomplices at Immigration itself. The relevant Ministry got the offer accepted by Cabinet and Parliament .Immigration had excuses ready each time the VFS service was found wanting.
Incentives would have been offered by VFS on a continuous basis , to be paid as long as VFS stayed in business. That is why the Ministry authorities felt it could ignore a Supreme Court order and do so publicly. Bribery and corruption are usually conducted secretly and on a one-off basis. Going public like this is most unusual.
When the Supreme Court order was announced the Ministry authorities immediately called a press conference , which was aired on the television news channels and announced than VFS had come to stay. It was not possible to comply with the Supreme Court order, because there were technical obstacles . Attorney General would tell this to the Court. They did not explain why Attorney general did not say this at the initial hearing itself.
The media focused mainly on the impact of the VFS activity. But critics swooped in on the corruption aspect. Corruption charges have been levelled at the Public Security Minister. He was the only government Minister publicly standing by the agreement, said one critic.[1] The politicians and officials involved should be held accountable, said Champika Ranawaka. [2] Auditor General’s report on this matter should be handed over to the CID and the Bribery Commission, said Rohan Pethiyagoda.[3]
Harsha de Silva, Chairman, COPF said that Auditor General’s report should be forwarded to the US Department of Justice, requesting an FCPA investigation because VFS is partly owned by Blackstone, a New York based financial giant. VFS therefore comes under the scrutiny of US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. .The FCPA requires companies whose securities are listed in the USA to meet stringent accounting and anti-bribery provisions [4]
The GBS-IVS-VFS visa project has been described as a scam three or four times bigger than the Bond Scam,. Unlike most corrupt activity, which are one off and secretive, this one involves an ongoing public service. This service, which all over the world is tightly controlled by the government for security reasons, was breezily plucked out of the hands of the local provider and given, under questionable conditions, to an outside party who were going to make money out of it.
COPF recommended a comprehensive forensic audit by the Auditor General’s Office after which COPF recommended that this deal to be abrogated or revised. COPF was informed in September 2024 that that the Auditor General had already initiated such an audit. The Government has initiated an immediate forensic audit into the irregularities associated with the VFS Global deal, said Minister for Public security, Vijitha Herath .( concluded)
REFERENCES
https://island.lk/gl-visa-scam-bigger-than-t-bond-rackets/.
https://www.parliament.lk/uploads/comreports/1720771221058053.pdf
https://www.sundaytimes.lk/240519/news/lankan-officers-retake-visa-desk-at-bia-557868.html
https://www.sundaytimes.lk/240804/business-times/flaws-in-tourism-565656.html
https://www.sundaytimes.lk/240804/news/online-visa-process-suspended-by-sc-566208.html
https://www.sundaytimes.lk/240811/business-times/sri-lanka-immigration-link-on-the-blink-567044.html
https://www.tamilguardian.com/content/transparency-international-challenges-sri-lankas-vfs-courts j
https://www.themorning.lk/articles/8QnB6AIKRxAjQmQ4JVGk11.8.2024
https://www.themorning.lk/articles/B3mUwGGLGxqFpBxmkznu
https://www.themorning.lk/articles/JBj1ShxiHMiY6uCH8ecB
[1] https://groundviews.org/2024/05/20/the-vfs-controversy-making-sense-of-what-happened/
[2] https://island.lk/on-arrival-visa-scandal-mp-ranawaka-demands-action-against-politicos-and-officials-responsible/#google_vignette t
[3] https://island.lk/the-vfs-visa-deal-the-anatomy-of-a-scam/#google_vignette
[4] https://island.lk/the-vfs-visa-deal-the-anatomy-of-a-scam/#google_vignette