Massive fraud committed at children’s home in Koggala
May 18, 2016
Somwathi Saparamadu Children’s Home in Harumalgoda, Koggala was started as a children’s home for tsunami orphans. It was started by well respected hotelier S. D. Saparamadu and his wife Rupa Saparamadu, daughter of the great author Martin Wickremesinghe who also hailed from Koggala. Mr. & Mrs. Saparamadu, together with a group of Dutch donors collected millions of Euro and built a children’s home which was held as a shining example of how a charity should be managed. The Somawathi Nivasa has received many accolades both in Sri Lanka and in Holland and today houses more than 150 children.
Unfortunately, Somawathi Nivasa is now embroiled in a financial scandal running into hundreds of millions of rupees. The Criminal Investigation Division of the Sri Lanka Police (CID) has been provided with evidence of this massive fraud but has been dragging their feet due to political interference and bribery. Despite the delaying tactics of the CID, they have produced evidence to the Nugegoda Magistrate Court that exposes a systematic fraud that runs into many millions.
The Saparamadu Family owned a large piece of land in Harumalgoda where they were building a home for the elderly. When the tsunami happened in December 2004, they joined up with a Dutch lady named Marja van Leeuwen who had formed a charity named ‘Stichting Weeshuis Sri Lanka’ to help children orphaned by the tsunami. Together, they changed the objective of the project into an orphanage and formed the Somawathi Saparamadu Children’s Home in memory of Mr. S. D. Saparamadu’s late mother. Mrs. Van Leeuwen raised millions of Euro and got many European professionals to volunteer at the children’s home. Many large corporations in the Netherlands donated significant sums of money and some of the biggest corporate bigwigs in Holland sat in the advisory board of Stichting Weeshuis Sri Lanka. Mrs. Van Leeuwen was later awarded a knighthood by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands for her work done in Sri Lanka.
