Weliamuna calls for accountability on Airbus fiasco
J.C. Weliamuna, the chairman of a committee that probe corruption in SriLankan Airlines last year, has called for the people behind the decision to purchase four Airbus A350 super-luxury aircraft at an inflated price to answer for the dreadful crime. ”There is no question that the people who took this decision (should) be held accountable in terms of criminal law,” said Mr. Weliamuna, a well-known lawyer, who headed the Board of Inquiry set up to investigate the mishandling of the national airline under the previous regime.
The purchase of the new aircraft has been labelled as the “most corrupt deal” by Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake and this view was upheld by Mr. Weliamuna who was answering a question at a seminar on ‘Good Governance – The Way Forward’ in Colombo this week said more “criminal investigations” was needed. “We have submitted our report to the Government. It is up to the Government to act on it, but there are a lot of further things to investigate.
This (inquiry) was only a fact-finding mission but I agree that those taking decisions (to buy aircraft at exorbitantly inflated rates) must be held accountable. If it is not done, the people will ask us one day why we didn’t do it, ” Mr. Weliamuna said. The Government of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa had undertaken to re-fleet the entire airline at a cost of around US$2.3 Billion. Faced with mounting debt, the current government had cancelled the deal but had to still fork out Rs. 25 billion as a settlement to the leasing company after scrapping the deal.
It has been revealed by the Finance Minister that if this settlement hadn’t been reached, the Government would have had to bear a loss of US$890 million monthly. The question was posed from the floor – if accountability is part of Good Governance, then who should be held accountable for this Rs. 25 billion which Sri Lanka must pay to the leasing company? Mr. Weliamuna pointed a finger at the decision-makers with the buck stopping at the Board of Directors of SriLankan Airlines who was probably acting under the bidding of the former regime.
This example of wrongdoing underlined the views of the first two speakers at the Good Governance seminar organised by the OPA (Organisation of Professional Associations) on Wednesday where they said the body had to do a lot of soul-searching. Mr. Weliamuna, talking on the topic of transparency, and Chandra Jayaratne, former chairman of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, who spoke of the Rule of Law, both insisted that it is the professionals who must he held accountable for allowing corrupt practices to flourish.
They said large scale corruption would continue to be endemic if professionals – the auditors, the bankers, the accountants, the lawyers, the doctors, etc – were not held accountable and “named and shamed” for their wrongful acts, and went unpunished. ”But even naming and shaming hasn’t worked. We have to put a few bad eggs into jail,” said Good Governance activist Mr. Jayaratne. He brought up the case of drug dealer Wele Suda as an example of money laundering. “Wele Suda’s money was collected by a bank every morning.
They bring the money in a gunny bag and the bank manager counts it, writes the pay-in slip and banks it. Almost 75 per cent of the cases we have investigated have no KYC (know your customer) documents in the banks.” He provided numerous examples of wrongdoings in other professions too. For instance in surveying: “A person buys a plot of land which has a number on it. He then buys up all the other houses and land around that property then goes to the Municipal Council and makes one deed for all the property under the original number (the first land).
He then only declares this one asset while all the other properties, bought with laundered money are not mentioned. These are not rogues I’m talking about but professionals. We have to change our ways.” The large audience of professionals was reminded that transparency and the Rule of Law were two key aspects of Good Governance. Mr. Weliamuna added: “A dictator can govern; so can a terrorist as we have seen. But this is not good governance. We need a political will but this alone is not enough for we also need strong institutions like an independent judiciary and a free press.”