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Your
dream car may run into a nightmare An unsuspecting
customer paid Rs. 1.5 million to buy an almost new Japanese car.
It turned out that it was one sold by a leading importer through
a leasing company. The person who leased it had resold the car on
forged documents. Another, purchased a Rs. one million luxury Japanese
van which was sold again on forged documents. Ultimately both who
wanted to be proud car owners of luxury vehicles lost their money
and the vehicle too. "Six or
seven such cases are reported every month," says City Fraud
Bureau Inspector G. M. Jayaratne. Forged documents were freely used
in these transactions, like in the case of land sales, he told The
Sunday Times. "We come
across a lot of cases where the chassis and the engines have been
changed and as such it's difficult to trace the vehicles unless
they are taken to the Registrar of Motor Vehicles (RMV)," he
explained. Meanwhile,
a Colombo leasing company manager who wanted to remain anonymous
for obvious reasons said they ran into forged documents almost daily.
"There are bank statements, identity cards, business registrations
given to us which are all forgeries," he said. He said they
were unable to get information from banks due to various regulations
and that made it more difficult for the leasing company to check
on the credibility of the person. The CID is
now investigating a racket where a Mitsubishi Lancer worth Rs. 1.5
million and Toyota Van worth Rs. 1 million, were resold with forged
documents after having being leased from a leasing company. An official
from this company said he had received calls threatening him after
he had made a complaint to the CID. The CID inspector P. Ampavila
said they have arrested those involved in the leasing of the car.
"The identity cards, the copies of business registration, deeds
were all forged". He said the person who had introduced the
suspects to the leasing company had allegedly been paid Rs. 50,000. After having
leased the vehicle they had sold the car to someone else, who had
in turn sold it to another party. The CID finally traced the vehicle
to a Delkanda car sales centre whose owner had been using the vehicle
with garage number plates. The van has
also been recovered, but the CID is yet to arrest those who had
leased the vehicle. The van had been sold to a air force deserter,
who in turn had sold it to someone else. While those two persons
have been arrested, the CID is still on the look out for the applicant
and the two guarantors. Their investigations
have revealed that the person who introduced the two applicants
to the leasing company is the same, but the CID is looking into
whether there is a connection between the two gangs. Inspector Ampavila
said they had also arrested a man wanted in connection with more
than 100 fraud cases. The suspect Susantha Ranjith Narangoda was allegedly involved in more than 50 cases where he used to rent cars from a rent-a-car and then change the number plates before selling them to unsuspecting people. Out
of mine: committee seeks action According to
Rehabilitation Ministry statistics, more than one million land mines
have been laid in the North and East, of which only a very small
number have been removed. At least 15
civilians are injured or killed in Sri Lanka each month due to land
mines laid by both the Army and the LTTE. "Wherever
there were camps, mines were laid as the first line of defence,"
Bradman Weerakoon, head of the steering committee, said. He said mines
were posing a major obstacle for the resettlement of the displaced
people and the committee's focus was largely on the human side of
the issue. According to
Mr. Weerakoon, in the western Jaffna area, there are more than 300
known mined fields, covering over 20 square kilometres. Though records
of the location of minefields have been kept by both the Army and
the LTTE, it is believed that some of these records are lost. Thus
there is a proposal to keep copies of all minefield records in safe
custody with a mutually-agreed neutral institution or country. The Government is yet to ratify the Ottawa Convention on land mines despite lobbying from international agencies. The government holds the view that a total ban on land mines is not possible until an agreement is reached with the LTTE.
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