Chandu Epitawala's appointment is just like many other UNP choices

Tuesday, 17 March 2015 

During the last two months Ranil Wickremasinghe’s Government appointed so many corrupt officials with dubious histories to various Government organizations.

Chandu Epitawala is no different.

In 2012 Chandu Epitawala had to resign from SEC because of a corrupt deal which got exposed.

Chandu Epitawala had obtained money from a Japanese Investor who was given a licensee as a Stock Broker ( NWS securities). He had visited Japan on SEC account to conduct his private business discussions. He had a secret deal with the Japanese investor to pay him a monthly fee for the services he was rendering as an insider of SEC.

A file containing all the correspondences between this Japanese Investor and Epitawala was handed over to SEC in August 2012, through a third party by the disgruntled investor. The investor said until them he didn’t want to pursue this as Chandu Epitavala had the protection of former Chairman Tilak Karunaratne was removed from Chairmanship

An independent lawyer Gazali Hussein appointed by SEC to look into this matter recommended commission to do a formal inquiry and take action against Epitawala as the case was quite clear from the correspondances.

However having realized that he was trapped, Epitawala pleaded with then commission and resigned from the post before the investigation was commenced.

The commission unfortunately decided not to pursue the matter any further because they were worried that undue publicity to such an incident would have further affected reputation of SEC which was already damaged due to Tilak Karunaratne’s foolish way of media handling.

So this is the ROGUE Ranil and Tilak want to bring Back to SEC.

Each and every member of the new commission should take personal responsibility for this decision if they approve the appointment of a person who had to leave the organization under those circumstances.

Tilak is a bad omen for the stock market. This time he is going to do a bigger and lasting damage. Who will come to rescue this time, now that all good people are gone ?