Impeachment And Corruption: Why Is The Non Executive Chairman The Only Accused?
Charitha Ratwatte
An ogre is a monster in a fairy tale or popular legend, usually represented as a hideous monster who feeds on human flesh. Recently in a number of Asian countries, the ogre of corruption has manifested itself, among the political class and their acolytes.
Normally it is the political class which alleges corruption and related misbehaviour among bureaucrats, public officers and business persons who do not tow their political line and carry out their illegal or unethical orders.
But just now, ironically, this ogre has flown back home to roost. Remember, it was the famous American author Mark Twain, who in his infinite wisdom, once declared the only criminal class in the United States of America is in Congress!
Let’s take Sri Lanka first. Corruption of the political class has a long history. The Thalgodapitiya Commission was appointed in the late 1950s to inquire into allegations of corruption among some politicians. A Department and then a Commission to eradicate and inquire into Bribery and Corruption was created. In its present incarnation, the Commission can only act on a complaint.
Readers would recall the infamous attempt to unload some shares of a finance company, on to a State bank, in the recent past. The putative buyer was a State bank, regarding which there is Government guarantee on deposits. The shares purchased – 7,863,362 in number – were overvalued, the purchase price too high. Purchased with depositors’ funds, over which there was a Government guarantee.
The bank attempted to justify the purchase, by a convoluted claim that the purchase would allow the bank, through the finance company, to get into the provision of profitable financial services which the bank’s enabling law did not permit it to indulge in! The creators of the State bank, advisedly, prohibited that bank from getting into that kind of speculative, high risk financial services, for good reason. Because this was depositors’ money, over which there was a Government guarantee.
The ethics of the bank trying to do, through an underhand transactional device, something its own enabling law did not explicitly allow it to do, is beyond belief and itself highly questionable. That, if anything, amounts to corruption. The public outcry against the transaction was so outraged that the Government was forced to cover its tracks and order the sale cancelled. The Securities and Exchange Commission had to give a special dispensation for the bank to resell the shares in the finance company bought and paid for by the State bank to the sellers, who themselves, it is rumoured, are political acolytes of the highest order
