{"id":43295,"date":"2015-04-20T23:04:53","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T05:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=43295"},"modified":"2015-04-20T15:25:16","modified_gmt":"2015-04-20T22:25:16","slug":"ranil-and-unp-forfeit-corruption-issue-over-bond-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/04\/20\/ranil-and-unp-forfeit-corruption-issue-over-bond-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"Ranil and UNP Forfeit \u2018Corruption\u2019 Issue over Bond Fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"

Metteyya Brahmana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

One of the main reasons Maithripala was able to secure enough majority Buddhist votes to defeat Mahinda in January\u2019s election is by promising to clean up the corruption.\u00a0 Securing three quarters of Tamil and Muslim votes along with UNP votes would have still left Maithripala well short of 50%of the vote to win, so the corruption issue was critical to his very slim 51% victory.<\/p>\n

Now we discover that Ranil is no better than Mahinda on corruption, and may actually be worse if you look at his actions in covering up the bond fraud by the Central Bank governor that he appointed.\u00a0 Ranil appointed a team of well-known UNP loyalist lawyers to investigate the bond fraud, and not one of them has experience in securities issues or securities fraud.\u00a0 It is therefore not a surprise that Ranil\u2019s panel cleared the Central Bank governor of wrongdoing, but their assertion that he had no \u2018direct\u2019 role in the bidding process demonstrates that they were not even investigating the right issue.<\/p>\n

The bond fraud issue concerned changing the indicated interest rate that would be accepted from 9.5% to 12.5% at the last minute based on a directive of the Central Bank governor after all of securities dealers had placed their bids.\u00a0 The only dealer at the high 12.5% end of the accepted range was Perpetual Treasuries, which is a family firm run by the Central Bank governor\u2019s son-in-law\u2019s family.\u00a0 Obviously, the government would prefer bids with higher interest as they get more money, so Perpetual Treasuries bid was accepted while the lower interest bids of other securities dealers were disfavored.\u00a0 How could Perpetual Treasuries be the \u2018only\u2019 securities dealer to know that the interest rate accepted range would be changed to 12.5%?\u00a0 This is the question Ranil\u2019s three-person panel should have been investigating, as it indicates that Perpetual Treasuries received \u2018insider information\u2019 from its family connection to the Central Bank governor, but instead they focused on whether the Central Bank governor had a \u2018direct\u2019 role in accepting the bids.\u00a0 Because the Central Bank governor is never directly involved in accepting any bids in a bond issue, this allowed the panel to clear the Central Bank governor of wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0What a farce!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why didn’t Ranil call in the US Justice Department and the World Bank to investigate this complex financial fraud like he is doing to investigate allegations of fraud against members of the Rajapaksa government?\u00a0 In justifying his actions in calling for foreign law enforcement assistance against the Rajapkasa regime, he claimed Sri Lanka did not have the expertise to investigate complex financial fraud, so what changed this time when his Central Bank governor is facing allegations of complex financial fraud?\u00a0 It is obvious that Ranil speaks out of both sides of his mouth, and really is not interested in rooting out corruption at all, especially when a UNP person is involved.<\/p>\n

The bad news for Ranil is that this is not going to go down very well with the Sri Lankan voter in June, especially the non-UNP Buddhist voters that he pulled away from Rajapaksa in the January election.\u00a0 Given the super slim 51% vote margin in January, the UNP is playing party politics with the corruption issue\u201d virtually assures UNP rejection in the upcoming polls.\u00a0 Maybe the SLFP will not be perceived as any better on the issue, but it opens the door for the revival of the PA (People\u2019s Alliance) that Mahinda is considering in contesting for Prime Minister, and puts the non-UNP Buddhist votes for Maithripala back in play for Mahinda\u2019s taking.\u00a0 Serious efforts to root out corruption can never be a partisan issue; all persons regardless of their party affiliation must be held accountable, including those in the UNP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Metteyya Brahmana One of the main reasons Maithripala was able to secure enough majority Buddhist votes to defeat Mahinda in January\u2019s election is by promising to clean up the corruption.\u00a0 Securing three quarters of Tamil and Muslim votes along with UNP votes would have still left Maithripala well short of 50%of the vote to win, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}