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Bogus business booms
Company executive defrauds millions in tax cheques, high value stamps, visas, passports and forgeries galore
Govt. Analyst overloaded with 32,000 cases

By Chris Kamalendran
While the Government Analyst’s Department (GAD) complains of the lack of staff and other resources, some 32,000 cases of forgery including a stunning multi-million rupee company tax fraud are still being analysed.
In the income tax fraud involving some Rs. 8 million, a company executive is alleged to have altered cheques from his employer to the Commissioner of Inland Revenue and deposited them in his own account under the name of a fictitious company.

According to preliminary investigations by the GAD, the executive had allegedly changed the cheques credited to the “COMMISSIONER OF INLAND REVENUE” by altering or adding letters and words and making it read ‘TEQMISSIONERY SOFTINEAND TREYENOED LANKA (PVT) LTD’.
The company began to ring alarm bells when the Department of Inland Revenue sent it warning letters over the non-payment of income taxes. The puzzled company called in the CID and investigations revealed that the executive was living high and far beyond his means.

The suspect has been arrested and a case in pending.
In other cases, ingenious Sri Lankan racketeers have found ways of forging even the supposedly unforgeable new passports issued by the Department of Immigration and Emigration.

Other big time forgeries include visas, education certificates and national identity cards with the forgery charge ranging from Rs. 1000 to tens of thousands.

One of the biggest items of forgery is the coveted and imported GCE Advanced Level certificates. Investigations revealed that the forgery of the A/L certificates – a gateway to higher studies – takes only five minutes. The forgers have the signature of the Commissioner of Examinations readymade through a scanning process and all they need to do is give bogus credits and distinctions for various subjects with the number depending on the amount being offered.

Last year alone, the GAD was piled up with more than 5,000 cases of forgery and with a backlog of some 30,000 from previous years, the department is bursting at the seams while forgers are having a boom time and the biggest business of their lives.

Another favourite of the forgers is the high value stamp generally used for land deeds. The forgeries look very much like the genuine ones and in any event a hard look is taken not at the stamp but at the wording of the deed, thus the forgery often goes unnoticed.

The forged Rs. 1,000 stamps are known to be printed in bulk and could be detected only through sophisticated equipment at GAD. The forged lottery tickets are among those cases under investigations with hardly any difference between the original and the bogus tickets.

The cases of forged passports are often referred to the department, despite assurances from Immigration authorities that the newly introduced passports cannot be forged.

Government Analyst T.G. Somapala said a lack of staff was a major problem for him not only in probing forgeries but also in expediting the investigations in analyzing narcotics, explosives and food samples.

He said that two months ago he was given 16 new staff members and they were being trained on-the-job, but the load facing the department was mountainous.

Mr. Somapala said they also have another problem about space. He said the department also needed much more office space. Earlier attempts to get a new building in Colombo 7 were stopped by the Urban Development Authority and now the department had been offered land in Pelawatte, but construction was yet to begin.

Black powder tricksters
Two foreigners had duped locals that a black cartridge paper could be turned into dollars whipping out a black dust on it.

The Modus Operandi was that the foreigners handed over a black bundle of papers to the locals and said that they could wipe the black dust on it. They proved their point by wiping the black dust which was sprayed on two genuine dollar notes at the end of the bundle.

After their demonstration they handed over the bundle and left with the money. The locals back at home attempted to wipe the remaining paper, but found that they could not wipe the black paper.
On a tip-off the two foreigners were arrested.

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