Financial Times

Drama at CIMA continues

By Duruthu Edirimuni Chandrasekera

Considered the most professional accounting body, the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) Sri Lanka has gone through some stark controversies during this year. The latest was a severe blow to the image crisis it has been suffering when CIMA UK, the governing body of CIMA Sri Lanka suspended the local council last week.

Gowri Shanker, CIMA Sri Lanka President, Deputy President Viren Wijesinghe, and Vice President Melanie Kanaka were amongst the 11 professionals who were suspended due to non governance. The council has been having serious disputes with the CEO Bradley Emerson over the way he ran the institute, and in turn with CIMA UK.

Richard Ebell, CIMA President from 2000-2001, said there is a reputation damage to CIMA Sri Lanka Division and that this is very serious. "I only hope that we can find a solution to this issue very quickly".
In a letter on Monday to the members, CIMA UK said, “The decision has been taken today to suspend the Sri Lanka Divisional Council with immediate effect. This was decided collectively by the CIMA Council, the Institute's governing body, after considering the recommendation of an independent review.”

It also said that a consultative body of at least three members in Sri Lanka is to be appointed by the President and other Honorary Officers of CIMA to advise on the affairs of the Sri Lanka Division during the suspension period.

CIMA members including eminent past presidents of the local body (many who declined to be quoted) showed displeasure at this move. "When the local council was making too much noise, the governing body suspended them. When something like this happens you lose faith," a CIMA member told The Sunday Times FT.

Ms. Shankar said she was informed on Friday November 12, through a telephone call from Glynn Lowth, President CIMA Global that the Sri Lanka Divisional Council was being suspended with immediate effect. “He alleges that this decision was taken due to failures in governance within the local Council in Sri Lanka. This is a serious statement but very strangely, no details of such failures were given against the locally elected council at any time,” she said in a press statement on Wednesday.
"The Sri Lanka Divisional Council is a role model on governance to the rest of the world. The local council has alerted CIMA Headquarters in London on many occasions through resolutions and other communiqué serious governance issues related to the Division. What you are seeing today is standing up for justice and governance in the real world carries a heavy price on the part of honest professionals in Sri Lanka," she said.

The CIMA President said specific issues of failure on the part of the London office to follow accepted practices of good governance that CIMA stands for were pointed out at the AGM and in the resolutions, letters, etc. over a period of 18 months. “This serious action by CIMA London is shortsighted because CIMA Sri Lanka Division is the largest grouping of members and students outside the United Kingdom and also the Council consists of qualified professionals of high standing,” she said.

Ms Shankar said the baseless allegations on the Divisional Council is highly irresponsible by CIMA headquarters in London. “They fail to realise injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
In an e-mail to The Sunday Times FT, a CIMA member asked how a person dismissed by a local bank in a few hours notice was appointed as the CEO of CIMA Sri Lanka that claims to be in the forefront of corporate governance?

Mr Emerson, at the heart of the issue, declined to comment on the allegations and the affairs of CIMA Sri Lanka. Another spokesperson at the CIMA Secretariat in Colombo, when asked, didn’t know who would comprise the 3-man committee that will temporarily help run the affairs until the dispute is resolved.


 
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