Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 09:42 pm SL Time, ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Dec 31, Colombo: An election monitor and an anti-corruption watchdog in Sri Lanka has requested the President Maithripala Sirisena to immediately make the final report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Central Bank Bond Issuance available to the public.
Speaking at a media conference in Galle yesterday, Executive Director of Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE) Keerthi Tennakoon has requested the President to promptly release the special 1400-page report, which was handed over to the President yesterday by the chairman of the commission Supreme Court Justice K. K. Chithrasiri, to the public.
The President appointed the Commission of Inquiry on 27th January 2017 to investigate, inquire into and report on the Issuance of Treasury Bonds during the period 01st February 2015 to 31st March, 2016.
CaFFE Executive Director said the civil organizations and the public pressed for the government to appoint a commission to probe the great bond scam and as a result the President appointed the Commission of Inquiry.
"The purpose of this commission was to identify individuals and organizations involved in the scam and to obtain a review report to ensure that similar scams will not happen in the future," Tennakoon said.
"The people of this country have a right to know about this report. They did not appoint the Commission to nominally write a report and keep it hidden in the hands of the First Person," the activist said.
"The People did not ask the President to keep this report of this massive financial crime, which is claimed to have made a Rs. 8 billion loss to the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and a Rs. 8 billion loss to the government according to the Auditor General, in a safe," the CaFFE director said.
"There are definite evidence that a large scale financial fraud has been committed. Those who were involved in it have been revealed in an open investigation. Now the whole world is watching.
Therefore we honorably urge the President to reveal the report to the country," he further said.
Pointing out that reports of many presidential commissions in the past regimes have gone into oblivion, the CaFFE executive Director asked the President not to contribute to that history by keeping the report of the Bond Commission hidden.
