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Dirty-tea racketeers ruin Lanka's image
Five warehouses raided, Tea Chief under threat
By Chris Kamalendran

The police team led by SSP Lugoda looks on as Tea Commissioner Hemaratne explains a point. Below a police officer sealing one of the warehouses that were raided.

The racket cannot be dismissed as a storm in a teacup. It was a major tempest that shook the tea world until the Sri Lankan police last week raided five warehouses - four in Colombo and one in Kandy - and arrested five employees of millionaire crooks who had stained Sri Lanka's image as the country that produced the world's best tea.

The raid led by Colombo Crime Division (CCD) Chief SSP Sarath Lugoda exposed one of the biggest rackets in the tea industry and shed light on how substandard tea was exported to many West Asian and African countries.

The warehouses the police raided were full of paper sacks of tea - neatly packed and ready for exports. The sacks of tea bore the label, which said the contents were high quality Sri Lankan tea.

But Tea Commissioner H. D. Hemaratne who, along with his officials, also joined the police raid party said the tea inside was not fit for consumption. A quick examination by Tea Board officials revealed that some of the bags contained tea not fit for consumption and some had discarded tea that was used as fertilizer.

The raids netted in more than 200,000 kilograms of substandard tea meant for exports. Police investigations have revealed that the racketeers were responsible for exporting 800 container loads of substandard tea to West Asian and African markets in the past two years.

After the raids, the Police were able to stop five container loads of tea that were about to be shipped. A police officer conducting investigations said they believed the racket was conducted with the blessings of politicians and the involvement of the underworld.

He said the police were now trying to ascertain whether the two recent shooting incidents in which one of the tea company executives was killed and another badly injured in an attack in Colombo, were linked to the multi-million-rupee racket.

Threats
Tea Commissioner Hemaratne said he had received threatening calls from politicians and thugs who wanted him to drop the case. The Tea Commissioner is to submit a full report on the samples he had collected from the warehouses.

Police explaining the modus operandi of the racketeers said some small time private traders involved in export of tea buy tea sweepings while they purchase a small quantity for exports. The racketeers also buy tea stolen from factories. The sweepings and the stolen tea are then sold to racketeers who blend and export them as high quality Sri Lankan tea.

Police have also found out that the racketeers are also involved in siphoning off sacks of tea belonging to reputed tea companies while they were being transported. "They pay the driver and the cleaner of the lorry and unload the sacks containing high quality tea and replace them with identical sacks that contained substandard tea," a police officer said.

Tea Commissioner Hemaratne said all tea-blending facilities should register with the Tea Control Board, but none of the five warehouses that were raided had a licence.

He said samples collected from the ware houses were being examined by the Government Analysts Department, the Tea Board and the Tea Commissioner's Department. A full report is to be submitted to courts.

Further investigations by The Sunday Times showed that discarded tea was sold to some traders, who exported them as fertilizer to African countries after obtaining approval from the Tea Commissioner.

But some unscrupulous traders tamper with the documents permitting the export. The original document, which says the export commodity is Broken Mixed Fertilizer, is altered to read 'Broken Mixed Fennings', thus misleading the Customs that it was tea meant for consumption that is being exported.

When the news of the raid broke out, shocked leading tea traders expressed concern, saying the racket had tarnished Sri Lanka's image as the number one exporter in the world and brought down the demand for Lankan tea.

Tea Traders Association President Anil Cook told The Sunday Times they were closely monitoring the situation as the racket might have tarnished the names of genuine leading tea exporters.

Bryan Baptist, director of tea broking firm Bartleet, said that during a world tea conference in Kenya, officials of that country complained that low quality tea was exported to their country mainly to be re-exported to other African countries.

Tea traders called on police and authorities to act decisively and arrest the millionaire crooks before Sri Lankan tea was looked down upon as "not my cup of tea' by its ardent lovers throughout the world.

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