වැට් වංචාවේ හෙළි නොවූ රහස්
As the VAT fraud case ended with a verdict on a former Inland Revenue commissioner, one of thirteen accused of whom only five were ever arrested, Ivan recalls that Ravaya first exposed the fraud, the largest tax fraud in a South Asian state institution, on 26 June 2005, because the authorities had failed to act. He criticises the incomplete investigation, the ease with which an accused obtained travel documents and left, as in the forged-passport case of Rizana Nafeek, and the failure to honour the Auditor-General’s officer who uncovered the fraud.
නාගරික දේපොළ කොල්ලකෑම
Ivan describes the organised gangs that seize valuable urban land and houses, often with political protection, and gives examples: a wealthy donor’s Cinnamon Gardens property left to the Maharagama Cancer Hospital that was taken after his death, and a land fraud at Malabe in which a woman scientist who bought land was cheated, until police finally arrested a man who had become a multi-millionaire through such deals and then released him after a statement.
කූට ලේඛන සංස්කෘතිය (ජාතික හැඳුනුම්පත හා ගමන් බලපත්රය)
Answering officials who disputed details in his series on the bureaucracy, Ivan stands by his accounts and then turns to how deep forgery runs. Using Dayananda Dissanayake’s Nuwara Eliya deal, he calculates the Treasury’s loss at over Rs. 6.1 million on one plot. Birth certificates without serial numbers, a corrupt identity-card office that issued LTTE suicide bombers genuine-looking cards, and a passport office that keeps no copies have created an industry, fed above all by the trade in underage and overage housemaids for the Middle East. Forgery, he says, now runs from school admissions to medical licences and doctorates.
පක්ෂපාතභාවයට කප්පම් ගෙවන අපක්ෂපාතභාවයට දඬුවම් දෙන ක්රමයක්
Prompted by a reader’s tip, Ivan sets out how former Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake obtained a prime plot in Nuwara Eliya on President Kumaratunga’s recommendation for Rs. 30,000 in 1995 and sold most of it five months later for over Rs. 5.2 million. Such favours, he argues, are the bribe the executive presidency pays for loyalty, continuing the plunder of estate land after 1977. Those who uphold the law are punished instead: Auditor General Wijesuriya forced out, Justices Wanasundera and Mark Fernando passed over, B.C. Perera driven from the Treasury, and Shirani Bandaranayake impeached.
විදුලි මාෆියාව ඇත්තක්ද?
Weighing the arguments of Tilak Siyambalapitiya, Udaya Gammanpila, Harsha de Silva, Champika Ranawaka and the CEB chairman on the 2013 power tariff increase, the article argues that the root problem is Sri Lanka’s dependence on oil-fired private power costing Rs 40–45 a unit against Rs 1.50 for hydro. It asks who blocked the Norochcholai coal plant in 2002 so that oil plants could be tendered instead, why the Chinese plant keeps breaking down, and why the one-sided private power contracts exposed by the Central Bank in 2007 remain secret.
ක්රමය කුණුවී තිබෙන තරම පෙන්නුම් කරන නඩුවක්
Ivan sets out a fundamental-rights petition by T.R. Ratnasiri, a deputy superintendent of Customs, who for ten years has fought at his own expense to pursue a Rs 619 million customs fraud case against Colombo Dockyard. He traces how the inquiry was halted under a 2003 tax amnesty, revived, then undermined by three judgments of Sarath N. Silva that curtailed Customs’ powers, and how the petition accuses Attorney General Mohan Peiris and Treasury Secretary P.B. Jayasundera of acting to have the appeal withdrawn over the Director General’s objections. The courts, he notes, have shown little interest in hearing it.
ඉතිරි කිරීමේ බැංකුවේ කම්බා හොරකම
On the chairman’s orders, the National Savings Bank agreed to buy 13% of The Finance Company for Rs 390 million from four individuals — two of them directors — at about Rs 50 a share when the market price was Rs 30–32 and the real value perhaps under Rs 15, handing them some Rs 140 million. A senior officer alerted the Treasury Secretary and the President and the cheque was stopped, but the sellers were paid through Sampath Bank. The chairman, Pradeep Kariyawasam, is a political appointee and the husband of Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake, whom the government had placated with state posts for him when it passed her over for Asoka de Silva. Ivan warns that the case cannot be handled fairly, recalls how Sarath N. Silva destroyed the judiciary’s standing, and says no ethnic solution matters without a trustworthy judiciary.
තේ කර්මාන්තය නගා සිටුවීම
Tea, the editorial recalls, transformed Sri Lanka: it brought South Indian labour, roads and railways, and created the fortunes of low-country families such as Jeronis de Soysa, whose descendants’ wealth funded schools and hospitals. Nationalisation under Sirimavo Bandaranaike failed, and land-reform holdings became a pool for politicians’ land grabs, while privatisation sold estates cheaply. Smallholders from the south saved the industry, with double the yields of large estates. Since plantation workers’ children are leaving, the editorial proposes making workers smallholders on inalienable land, with companies limited to processing and marketing, and urges value-added exports on the Dilmah model and strict laws against blending inferior tea, as India and China turn to domestic consumption.
නීති ඇති කිරීම හා ප්රජාතන්ත්රවාදය
The much-argued bill for the revival of underperforming enterprises and underutilised assets passed its first reading by a majority of 76 — 122 for and 46 against, with two parties in the government abstaining. That shows there is no common agreement about this law even inside the government, and the vote against was well short too.
ව්යාපාර පවරා ගැනීමේ පනත
Two newspapers, one Sinhala and one English, led on the report that the government is moving to legislate in haste an act for taking over failed private sector businesses. Not all the government’s own businesses are profitable, Ivan points out: if every business must be profitable, the government should bring all of its own to profit before it puts a hand on the private sector.