CID busts organised gang
By Shanika Udawatte
The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has cracked down on an organised gang involved in many fraudulent activities including a defrauding of over Rs. 27 million from a private bank, and drug dealings in and out of Sri Lanka.

According to the CID team probing into the activities of the gang, it has had connections with several other gangs overseas. The three key suspects who were leading the operations of the gang were said to be a son of a parliamentarian, a gem businessmen from Negombo and a son of a well-established printing press owner in Wellawatte.

The suspects have allegedly sent forged internal memos to the head office of a private bank in Kollupitiya, similar to those prepared from its branch office in Dehiwala, during the period December 1999 and January 2000. Through the memos they have requested the release of travellers cheques and bank drafts to the branch office.

Later they are said to have arrived at the head office of the bank posing as bank executives of the branch office and collected the travellers cheques and bank drafts worth over Rs. 27 million and encashed them overseas. "We scrutinised all the entry and exit records of the bank in order to find out who has been present in the bank, so that we could trace the suspects of this fraud", a senior CID officer said.

The parliamentarian's son had also been an employee of the head office of the bank but had left before the fraudulent activities had taken place. Besides the defrauding of the bank the gang members are said to have been involved in preparing false credit cards and purchasing computers and computer equipment from foreign countries and selling them to a computer shop in a high class shopping mall in Kollupitiya.

CID sources said that the trio had used sophisticated data capturing devices to copy data from genuine credit cards and reproduce identical cards. "They have also been involved in drug trafficking, mainly heroin. One member of the gang was arrested in Madras while in possession of 21 kg. of heroin while another was caught in Singapore", a CID officer said.

We are now looking for two vital members of the gang who are absconding. One of them is currently reported to be in London and is wanted in several cases there too, he added.

Currently the CID is conducting investigations to trace the absconding suspects who are believed to be linked to the gang. It has also sought Interpol assistance for this purpose.

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