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Dirt war deepens
LRDC says Burns contract with CMC illegal, launches probe
By Asif Fuard
Following The Sunday Times May 15 expose that called into question the CMC's multi-million rupee deal with a private company for dumping garbage in a disputed land in Kotahena, the Land Reclamation and Development Corporation, is pulling up its socks and zipping its boots to take a plunge into the stink.

LRDC Chairman Somaweera Chandrasiri told The Sunday Times that after the scandal was highlighted in the media they had decided to launch a probe of their own because their complaints to the police and letters to the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) had brought no results. "We had complained to the CMC, the Grandpass police and the Colombo Divisional Secretariat but they had not taken action," Mr. Chandrasiri said.

The LRDC claims that the Bloemendhal land in which Burns Trading (PVT) Ltd. dumps Colombo's garbage was acquired by the state in 2001 and therefore the CMC should enter into a deal with the LRDC and make the payments to it.

Alleging that the company had obtained the land unlawfully and entered into a deal with the CMC, Mr. Chandrasiri said that the CMC should make the payments to the LRDC and not to Burns because the land rightfully belonged to the state.

Corroborating The Sunday Times expose, the LRDC chairman said the LRDC acquired the land from a family in the 1990s and returned it to them after it did not serve the purpose of acquisition. However, the land was acquired again by the LRDC in 2001 for flood retention purposes. It was only after this Burns had allegedly bought the land from one of the previous owners.

The Sunday Times learns that this transaction was made possible because of administrative loopholes in the registration process of land. The Sunday Times expose revealed that the title deed of a private land deposited at the Land Registry was not updated when the State acquires the land. This has allowed some people to sell their land to unsuspecting buyers even after the State acquires the land.

Mr. Chandrasiri said the Bloemendhal land Burns had purchased from a previous owner was illegal since the land had been vested in the State by then. He also questioned the legality of the mortgage deal Burns had entered into with the DFCC on the disputed land.

He charged that the DFCC had gone ahead with the deal in spite of several letters the LRDC had written to it informing that the land had been vested in the State.

DFCC Vice President (legal division) Visaka Srikantha told The Sunday Times that the bank checked with the Land Registry as to the authenticity of the deed before the mortgage deal was approved.

"There is a process which our clients have to go through when mortgaging a land. We always check the authenticity of the deed from the Land Registry," Ms Srikantha said.

However, she said the DFCC was not aware of the acquisition of the Bloemendhal land by the State because "as lawyers we do not see every government announcement in newspapers unless it affects the company". We go according to what the land registry has," she said.

Four days after Burns had purchased the land from a woman in Bloemendhal who owned her plot prior to the acquisition of it by the Government, the company mortgaged a part of the land and obtained a Rs.100 million loan from the DFCC bank. Todate, the company had obtained Rs. 579 Million from the DFCC bank by mortgaging this land.

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