By

Lucien Rajakarunanayake

While the publicity blitz on coronavirus seems to be settling down, there is now a political and corruption blitz catching on. It is the ‘Voharika Viganana Prahaaraya’ of Forensic Audit Blitz (FAB).

As the debate on the FAB gets louder the spread of corruption across the political divide in the country gets clearer. The divisions on party politics narrow down speedily when it comes to unity in the pastures of crooked profit and corruption.

While the Central Bank and Treasury Bonds are the formal issues involved in these forensic audits that are now the stuff of twisted debate, what is largely being hidden is how the savings of the vast majority of the people have been robbed by these Bond Scam rogues, and not necessarily the funds of the State.

A forensic audit relates to the application of scientific methods, tests or techniques relating to the detection of crime. The debate we have now is far away from the thinking of science, and closer to the unscientific, hooked and contorted thinking on how a crime could be hidden.

The painful reality of the Yahapalana or Ranil/Mahendran-/Ravi/Perpetual Bond Scam is how the savings of nearly 20 million account holders of the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) have been robbed in huge sums by the reigning swindlers of the day, in what is seen as the Perpetual Fraud of the Arjuna Mahendra-cum-Arjun Aloysius-in-law ill fame.

There were two Committees on Public Enterprises (COPE) reports of Parliament that had much to say about this huge fraud of Yahapalana proprietorship. One of those COPE reports had a rare exercise in footnotes, that largely saw no cheating or robbery by the Perpetual/Aloysian family delight. This was also the time of that warped telephone conversations and cheques to the value of millions given to MPs, across party divisions, by the Perpetual/Aloysian manipulators of MPs, politics and governance.

We’ve been waiting for a long time for the massive rogues of the UNP-led Yahapalana Robbery to be brought to justice. But the law takes time, and Mahendran being in Singapore makes things worse, so nothing happens. This is while Ranil Wickremesinghe, who shifted control of the Central Bank from the Finance Ministry to the Prime Minister’s Office, and Ravi Karunanayake, Finance Minister, who asked a state bank not to bid against Perpetual Treasuries, being here, as well as all those MPs who had phone calls with Perpetual Arjun and received hefty cheques also being here.

What we now have is the political hoodwinking exercise through the Forensic Audit, which shows that Treasury Bond, Central Bank and investment crookedness was not the sole delight of the Yahapalana Regime, but a continuing crookedness from at least a decade before the shameful 2016 and 2017 Treasury Bond scams.

We now see the scientific methods of search in the forensic audits show that public funds, not State funds, but the people’s savings in the EPF were hugely cheated by those who prevailed in the Central Bank before the Mahendran/Perpetual exercise, and shows the shameful role of the Cabraal/Perpetual exercise.

The voices of the Podujana Peramuna government are getting louder every day calling for new audits, CID inquiries and various other tactics of evasion. Such political manoeuvring in a largely crooked system of government is understandable, but certainly not acceptable, even when such cunning and scheming calls come from one time revolutionary politicians of the left, stuck in the dirty mud of the lotus field.

Getting down to the reality of the judicial system, no one is at fault until found guilty by a court of law. Arrests, detentions, remanding, displayed hand-cuffs, as well as special hospital beds remain the stuff of the innocent until found guilty. This is so for both Arjuna Mahendran and Ajith Nivaard Cabraal.

Those who call for action against the Arjuna Mahendran/Perpetual crew of the crooked say nothing about Cabraal.

They are also trying to cover up the painful reality that most of these losses in the Treasury Bonds, as well as the investments in the stock and secondary market, were monies of the people … not state funds … but the savings of millions in the non-government employees – those in the private sector, big and small businesses, the state corporations, the plantations – that vast area of employment outside government departments.

The many millions lost – thousands of millions – were all funds of the EPF and the Employees Trust Fund (ETF) too. These are the savings of the people that have been allegedly manipulated for the profits of Perpetual and other crooked dealers.

What should matter for these politicians who are shouting with twisted tongues about the Bond Scams and the Central Bank failures is the need for concern about the savings of the people, which the EPF says is meant for the ‘winter of life’. Such losses, if allowed to continue, with no legal search for the crooked, whoever they are, would mean a painful and shivering winter for the millions of members of the EPF and ETF.

Let the people, not the politicians and their henchmen, not the rogues and their gangs, get the real benefit of the Voharika Viganana Praharaya – or Forensic Audit Blitz. Let us know who and how these enormous losses, especially of the EPF, were manipulated, irrespective of their names and politico-social-family alignments, and bring them all to book. Bring them all before the law, the sooner the better, and if it is the current political necessity, start with Mahendran, and see how the pattern of crooked investments came from any previous governor of the Central Bank, whether Cabraal or anyone else.

Let’s act to save the EPF and ETF and not any Governor or perpetual associates among family and friends.

Courtesy:The Island