Carmakers in India to seek rupee trade payments with Africa

A man rides his motorbike past parked Hyundai cars ready for shipment at a port in Chennai October 1, 2013.REUTERS/BABU/FILE PHOTO

BY ADITI SHAH-Thu Jun 9, 2016

Automakers in India want to trade with African nations in rupees instead of dollars, in an attempt to boost exports to the continent, an auto industry body executive said on Thursday.

Africa, until last year, was the top importer of Indian-made vehicles, a position that now belongs to Latin America that receives 25 percent of India's auto exports.

Growth in total auto exports from India slowed to about 1.9 percent in the year to end-March compared with 15 percent growth in the previous 12-month period, due to falling sales to Africa.

Falling commodity prices have hit the economy of several African nations that are finding it challenging to make payments in dollars, said Sugato Sen, deputy director general at the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM).

SIAM, which represents carmakers in India, will write to the ministry of commerce later this month seeking a shift from dollar to rupee for all trade with African countries, Sen said.

Sen said China has entered into a renminbi trade agreement with Nigeria to boost exports and if this extends to other African nations it could be a "serious threat" to Indian exports.

"If rupee trade is allowed we will be able to export more," he said.

A switch to trading in rupees would, if successful, reflect growing confidence in India's $2 trillion economy and its currency.

Inflation has halved in recent years to around 5 percent and the Reserve Bank of India has, under Governor Raghuram Rajan, amassed more than $300 billion in reserves to back the national currency.India's total bilateral trade with Africa was $57 billion in the year to end-March, including exports of $25 billion, government data showed.

Auto exports to the African continent fell 22 percent to $2 billion in the year to March 31 - their lowest level in four years, according to data from SIAM. Exports to Latin America grew 19 percent to $2.3 billion over the same period.

Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, Tata Motors, Hyundai Motor Co and Nissan Motor Co are the leading auto exporters from India.

(Additional reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh; Editing by Douglas Busvine and Alexandra Hudson)

Time for change: Passwords for 32 million Twitter accounts may have leaked

 9th June 2016

A SEARCH-ENGINE that specializes in leaked records has flagged a potentially huge problem for Twitter – 32 million accounts may have had their passwords hacked and leaked.

LeakedSource, a site that aggregates data and allows people to search over 1.8 billion leaked records, said they have obtained data containing Twitter credentials that is being “traded in the tens of millions on the dark web”.

The site also obtained data from the massive 2012 LinkedIn hack, where over 100 million accounts had were hacked and their passwords leaked.

“This data set contains 32,888,300 records. Each record may contain an email address, a username, sometimes a second email and a visible password,” said LeakedSource. “We have very strong evidence that Twitter was not hacked, rather the consumer was.”

They also noted that Mark Zuckerberg, who made waves earlier this week when his Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest accounts were hacked briefly.

Anyone can search for their Twitter account on the site to find out if they have been affected by the leak, and change their passwords accordingly.

According to LeakedSource, the top five passwords used by Twitter users who are affected by the hack are:

• 123456
• 12345678
• qwerty
• password
• 1234567

However, Twitter is adamant its systems have not been breached. A spokesperson told TechCrunch: “We are confident that these usernames and credentials were not obtained by a Twitter data breach – our systems have not been breached.

“In fact, we’ve been working to help keep accounts protected by checking our data against what’s been shared from recent other password leaks.”

The company’s support account posted a tweet on Monday to remind users to update their passwords.

Twitter Support 

✔@Support

To help keep people safe and accounts protected, we've been checking our data against what's been shared from recent password leaks.

 Follow

Twitter Support 

✔@Support

Any time is a good time to make sure your account is secure, starting with an updated password. More tipshttps://support.twitter.com/articles/76036 

6:36 PM - 6 Jun 2016

Safe Tweeting: the basics

Keeping your account secure We want Twitter to be a safe and open community. This help page provides some information and tips to help you practice safe Tweeting and keep your acco

support.twitter.com

 
•  122122 Retweets
 
•  163163 likes

CO2 turned into stone in Iceland in climate change breakthrough

Radical new technique promises a cheaper and more secure method of burying CO2 emissions underground instead of storing it as a gas

Site close to the Hellisheidi geothermal powerplant, where CO2 was injected into volcanic rock. In two years it was almost completely mineralised. Photograph: Juerg Matter/Science

Members of the CarbFix science team handling rock core recovered during drilling at the CO2 injection site. Photograph: Juerg Matter/Science

Damian Carrington-Thursday 9 June 2016

Carbon dioxide has been pumped underground and turned rapidly into stone, demonstrating a radical new way to tackle climate change.

The unique project promises a cheaper and more secure way of burying CO2 from fossil fuel burning underground, where it cannot warm the planet. Such carbon capture and storage (CCS) is thought to be essential to halting global warming, but existing projects store the CO2 as a gas and concerns about costs and potential leakage have halted some plans.

The new research pumped CO2 into the volcanic rock under Iceland and sped up a natural process where the basalts react with the gas to form carbonate minerals, which make up limestone. The researchers were amazed by how fast all the gas turned into a solid – just two years, compared to the hundreds or thousands of years that had been predicted.

“We need to deal with rising carbon emissions and this is the ultimate permanent storage – turn them back to stone,” said Juerg Matter, at the University of Southampton in the UK, who led the research published on Thursday in the journal Science.

Matter said the only thing holding back CCS was the lack of action from politicians, such as putting a price on carbon emissions: “The engineering and technology of CCS is ready to be deployed. So why do we not see hundreds of these projects? There is no incentive to do it.”

The Iceland project has already been increased in scale to bury 10,000 tonnes of CO2 a year and the basalt rocks used are common around the world, forming the floor of all the oceans and parts of the land too. “In the future, we could think of using this for power plants in places where there’s a lot of basalt and there are many such places,” said Martin Stute, at Columbia University in the US and part of the research team.

Testing has taken place in the Columbia River Basalts, extensive deposits in Washington and Oregon in the US. India, which has many polluting coal power plants, has huge basalt deposits in the Deccan Traps.

One potential challenge for the new technique is that it requires large amounts of water: 25 tonnes for each tonne of CO2 buried. But Matter said seawater could be used, which would be in plentiful supply at coastal sites. Another is that subterranean microbes might break down carbonate to methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, but this was not seen in the Iceland research.

The research, called the Carbfix project, took place at Iceland’s Hellisheidi power plant, the world’s largest geothermal facility. The plant pumps up volcanically heated water to run electricity-generating turbines but this also brings up volcanic gases, including carbon dioxide and nasty-smelling hydrogen sulphide.

The researchers re-injected 230 tonnes of the gas, which was dissolved in water to prevent it escaping, down into the basalt to a depth of 400-500m. They used tracer chemicals to show that over 95% of CO2 was turned into stone within two years, “amazingly fast” according to Matter. Edda Aradottir, who heads the project for Reykjavik Energy, said: “It was a very welcome surprise.”

The Iceland project has now begun scaling up to bury 10,000 tonnes of CO2 a year, plus the hydrogen sulphide which also turns into minerals. The Columbia University group are also investigating another rock type, found in Oman, which may be able to turn CO2 into rock even better than basalt.

In conventional CCS, the CO2 is stored as a gas in sedimentary rocks such as exhausted oil fields under the North Sea. Unlike basalt, these rocks lack the minerals needed to convert CO2 into stone. Such sedimentary reservoirs could potentially leak and therefore have to be monitored, which adds to costs.

They have also raised concerns from the public and projects on land in the Netherlands and Germany have been halted as a result. “In Europe you can forget about onshore CCS,” said Matter.

Conventional CCS also requires the CO2 to be separated from the mix of gases emitted by power stations and industrial plants, which is expensive. But the basalt-based CCS does not require this. However, Matter said there would still be a role for conventional CCS in places where power plants are close to good reservoirs.

Stuart Haszeldine, professor of CCS at the UK’s University of Edinburgh and not involved in the new research said it was promising: “This is terrific. It may well provide a low-cost and very secure remedy for parts of the world where the suitable rocks exist. [But] this needs to be used as well as all the existing propositions, because the problem to be solved of thousands of million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year in the world is immense and no single remedy is anywhere near big enough or fast enough.”

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that CCS is hugely important to tackling climate change in the most cost-effective way. Without CCS, the costs of halting global warming would double, the IPCC said, an assessment with which the UK government’s advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, agrees.

However, the UK government cancelled a pioneering £1bn CCS competition in November. Globally, CCS has not developed as quickly as hoped, although some companies are using CO2 injection to drive more oil and gas from older fields. Haszeldine said there have been over 100 injections of CO2 gas in different countries worldwide since 1972, none of which are known to have leaked.

Other innovative approaches to CCS are being explored, including an ExxonMobil-backed project using fuel cells to make capturing CO2 cheaper and one from Ford which uses CO2 to make foam for use in their vehicles. Groups are also working on chemical advances to capture CO2 more easily.

What every pregnant woman needs to know about over-the-counter drugs

Not all medicines are off-limit during pregnancy CREDIT: PA

 BY Radhika Sanghani-3 JUNE 2016

Pregnant women are often given so much conflicting advice about what’s off-limits for them – from alcohol to cheese and ice-cream – they end up avoiding anything that isn't certified organic and natural.

But they don’t always have to - especially when it comes to over-the-counter drugs.

A new study published in the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy has found up to three quarters of pregnant women are suffering in silence from minor injuries because they wrongly fear that over-the-counter drugs could harm their babies.

Researchers found that women are so confused about conflicting advice on medications such as paracetamol, ibuprofen and antihistamines that they are steering clear of them altogether – sometimes unnecessarily.

To clarify what is and what is not acceptable to take during pregnancy, we spoke to GP Justine Setchell.

Here she helps bust myths about pregnancy and non-prescription drugs to set out the facts:

1. Paracetamol is OK

Dr Setchell explains: “In small doses, occasional use of paracetamol in pregnancy is fine. But a lot of headaches are caused from people rushing around too much, not being hydrated enough and so on, so it’s best to try and alleviate them with rest and lots of liquids first.”

If that doesn't work, it's fine to take some paracetamol. The NHS Choices website clarifies: “Paracetamol has been used routinely during all stages of pregnancy to reduce a high temperature and for pain relief.

There is no clear evidence that it has any harmful effects on an unborn baby.”

But as with all medicine taken during pregnancy, it’s best to use the lowest possible dose for the shortest possible time. In other words: only take it when you really need it. 

2. Avoid ibuprofen

Ibuprofen is a different type of pain killer to paracetamol, in that it also contains decongestants that affect blood vessels. It means it could possibly increase the risk of heart problems for a baby, and reduce the amount of amniotic fluid in the womb.

“It means that pregnant women should avoid ibuprofen,” says Dr Setchell. “Women definitely shouldn’t take it after 30 weeks of pregnancy.

And before that? "They need to discuss with a GP to see if the benefits outweigh the risks.”

3. Prescribed aspirin is OK

Aspirin generally should be avoided during pregnancy. But don't necessarily be alarmed if your doctor prescribes it - it's common for GPs to suggest a low dose, as it can help reduce the risk of miscarriage in some women.

It’s why Dr Setchell suggests all pregnant women speak to their doctor when considering taking over the counter medicine.

4. Some antihistamines are fine

Dr Setchell believes that antihistamines are generally OK to take during pregnancy, though it is best to always discuss it with a pharmacist beforehand. The NHS Choices website clarifies: “You can take some oral antihistamines when you’re pregnant, but not others.”

The best options are a corticosteroid nasal spray, antihistamine eye drops and then if necessary, speak to a medical expert who may recommend an antihistamine called loratadine. If that doesn’t work, they may recommend cetirizine.

SRI LANKA: Government’s delay in dealing with laws delays

See the YouTube Video relating to this article.

By Basil Fernando
June 8, 2016

Journalist, Poddala Jayantha in a moving article, written in Sinhala, recalls his ordeal which took place exactly 7 years ago in the evening of June 1st that shocked the entire nation. A threat which has been made to him by the brother of the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, was to be carried out on that fateful day. He was picked up at Embuludeniya junction by a group of people who had arrived in a white van, and was severely beaten up. He recalls about being beaten about hundred times on his head, chest, lower abdomen and then being put inside the van which was in fact a mobile torture chamber.

He was blindfolded and his hands were tied behind his back, they shaved his beard and hair, and put his hair inside his mouth, they have also severely beaten him up, broken the fingers of both his hands and then tried to break both his legs. They had inserted a wooden pole beneath his legs on which they broke his left leg and also caused severe injuries to the other leg. Then with the hair still inside his mouth they had tied his mouth with his hair inside and then threw him out of the moving van into a ditch and left him near the Angoda hospital road near a shrub jungle. It was a driver of a passing by three wheeler, who saw his body and then brought several other three wheeler drivers who have been kind enough to take him to a hospital. He recalls with gratitude those brave people who despite of the terror ridden times came to save his life.

This incident that happened seven years ago, is quite fresh in the minds of many people as it has remained, as a reminder of the terrible times, people in Sri Lanka had to live through. Jayantha is recalling this incident, at a time he is witnessing again the leaders of the very regime who caused such a terror, now again campaigning on behalf of media freedoms. Poddala Jayantha reminds us in the last paragraph of his article, that the only way to stop such tyranny from raising its head again is to strengthen the law enforcement mechanisms in the country for it to be capable of inquiring into crime and to punish the perpetrators of such crime. The perpetrators of this terrible crime against Poddala Jayantha and more importantly those who masterminded occurrences of such terror, have never been brought to justice. That alone is a clear indication of how bad Sri Lanka’s criminal justice system is, despite of the defeat of the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime, nearly 18 months back. Somehow, the new government has not been able to convince the Sri Lankan people that restoring of a functional criminal justice framework is a priority for this Government.

16th National Law Conference

The 16th National Law Conference was held last month and the participants at that conference also noted that justice institutions in Sri Lanka does not inspire the confidence of the people. Thus, at the highest levels, the country’s legal profession itself, has loudly proclaimed that justice establishments in Sri Lanka belongs to an endangered category.

According to reports on the 16th National Law Conference participants’ attention was drawn more seriously to the laws delays. It has belatedly noted what many people have already noted for many years. Like that the country does not have adequate number of prosecutors. In fact, there are only fewer than 50 state counsel looking into large amounts of files. One state counsel noted that the files when piled up stand higher than his own height. So it is no surprise that as much as five to seven years it has taken to file an indictment and much more time is taken before the end of the trial which still leaves further time for the appeals.

What the Conference failed to say is that such delays ridicules the very idea of justice. While, it was good of the participants at the Conference to have noted justice delays, it must however, be said the Conference proceedings do not show that the participants used the occasion to express their outrage adequately. After all, justice delays reduces the lawyers’ life into a comedy. The sheer wastage of their lives and even more so the lives of their clients should have made this Conference an occasion to get across the message to the Government that the Government’s own delays in dealing with the delays of justice is inexcusable.

If the lawyers who participated were as sharp as their profession requires them to be they should have pointed out that the problem really is not the justice delays but it is the Government’s delays to deal with a Government’s primary duty to enforce the law in the country. What good can the legal profession do if the law enforcement does not receive the highest attention of the Government.

The law enforcement is threatened only because the Government does not provide the country with adequate financial and other resources to have adequate number of judges, prosecutors and competent criminal investigators. Not having adequate budgetary allocations for this all important function, should have brought a collision between the lawyers and the Government, and that should have received expression at the National Law Conference. What that means is that, it is not only the government that is failing but the organised legal profession itself is failing to defend the legal system and their profession.

Is not Sri Lanka capable of affording a functional justice system

Imagine if there aren’t an adequate number of doctors to attend to the needs of the people in the country. 

The result will be that many patients will die or suffer in other ways. Or there is another possibility that there may emerge fake doctors as the patients somehow want to see a doctor when they are ill. These fake doctors may even give various things which may act as a placebo effect which gives an appearance of being medicine but in fact it is not. Likewise, in the case of the absence of adequate number of competent criminal investigators, prosecutors and judges so many very terrible consequences will follow. A distorted justice system is a source of grave sufferings. Also like in the case of fake doctors, within the justice system too all kinds of things may happen which may give the appearance of something being done but in fact nothing of real substance of justice will be done. The Law Conference gives some examples of this. 

The investors may not want to come when they know that enforceability of contracts in Sri Lanka takes a very long time as Sri Lanka is ranked 161 amongst 189 countries in a survey conducted by the World Bank on the efficiency of enforcing contracts; accused charged for rape, child abuse and even murder and many other grave crimes may get away with a suspended prison term; witnesses may not come to court as they get tired after many visits to the courts as postponements are made and as a result and unjust outcome may result in cases; and what is even more dangerous is that some people may seek the assistance of criminals to make wrongs right instead of resorting to institutions of justice. Anyone familiar with what is taking place in our courts and police stations may add a lot more to this list.

Why does the government fail to improve the system of justice?

It cannot be that the leaders of the government is unaware of what has become of our system of justice. Only possible conclusion to arrive at is that maintaining of a functional system of justice is not a priority as far as the government is concerned.

The implication is that the Government is not concerned with the wrongs that the citizens suffer from. How then can the government claim that it gives priority to ensure good governance?

GTF confident US won’t dilute Geneva resolution

Full implementation of proposals demanded

By Shamindra Ferdinando-June 8, 2016, 9:45 pm 

The Global Tamil Forum (GTF) yesterday declared that the US stand on a resolution unanimously adopted on Oct 1, last year at the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) with the consent of the Sri Lankan government hadn’t been changed.

UK based GTF spokesperson Suren Surendiran told The Island that the grouping hadn’t been told of the US changing its stance.

Surendiran was responding to a query whether the GTF felt the US was taking a softer approach in respect of the resolution, paving the way for Sri Lanka to rule out foreign judges in contravention of the Oct 1, 2015 resolution, jointly sponsored by Colombo and Washington. The Geneva resolution also recommended international prosecutors and investigators.

The Geneva body is scheduled to receive an oral statement as regards the post-resolution developments during the last week of this month.

Surendiran said as far as the grouping was concerned the top US representative in Geneva Ambassador Keith Harper on January 25, 2016 declared credibility of any accountability mechanism required involvement of foreign judges et al. Surendiran quoted Ambassador Harper as having said that the position wouldn’t change. Surendiran added: "Just as most governments, the US administration, too, has and will acknowledge progress and positive steps whenever a new government takes. That is how international relations work."

 Asked whether the GTF was concerned about the implementation of the Geneva resolution in the wake President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe ruling out foreign judges in the proposed judicial mechanism, Surendiran stressed that the resolution should be fully implemented. The GTF spokesperson said that anything less than what had been stipulated in the resolution would not be acceptable to the Tamil people and especially families of the victims.

 Having committed Sri Lanka to the Geneva resolution by co-sponsoring it, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government couldn’t go back on it. The bottom line was that Sri Lanka had accepted the resolution in letter and spirit in its entirety, Surendiran said, adding: "Post that co-sponsorship and internationally binding commitment, one cannot, whether you are the President or Prime Minister go back and renegotiate or misinterpret that resolution’s conditions and try to deviate from an agreed path."

 Surendiran recalled Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leader and the Opposition Leader R. Sampanthan as well as Ambassador Samantha Power during a visit to Colombo several months ago calling for the full implementation of the Geneva resolution. Asked whether the GTF would compromise its stand vis a vis the Geneva resolution, Surendiran insisted that the grouping would stand firm at all international forums including the UNHRC and Sri Lanka demanding the full implementation of the resolution."

 Demanding that Sri Lanka should respect its international obligations, the GTF spokesperson said that those who had suffered due to the conflict couldn’t be further denied justice.

 Asked whether the GTF would share information with Office for Missing Persons (OMP) set up in accordance with a Geneva Resolution adopted in Oct. 2015 to establish the whereabouts of the missing and also request foreign governments to do the same, Surendiran said that the grouping would certainly assist any genuine and sincere efforts of anyone.

 Surendiran said: We want foreign governments to facilitate the process. But, it is the responsibility of the government to reveal the fate of tens of thousands of people who gave themselves up to the military or surrendered during the final phase of the fighting.

 Referring to Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe’s declaration that except for less than 300 LTTE suspects and convicts in custody, the rest either perished during the conflict or fled the country, Surendiran said the government couldn’t ignore the need to investigate the cases of those who had surrendered to the military.

 Responding to another query, the GTF spokesperson said that the Commanding Officers of fighting formations deployed in areas where people surrendered east of the Kandy-Jaffna road should be held accountable for those thousands and thousands of disappeared persons. "Surely, they should have known what happened because they were in charge. Any illegal actions they may have carried out on orders in contravention of the law of the land and international law need to be investigated thoroughly and action be taken by prosecuting those who committed the crimes and against those persons who gave orders to commit those crimes"

 The GTF spokesperson said that the grouping would campaign aggressively in Geneva and other capitals to highlight the commitments made by the government and what he called confusing and contradicting statements that had been made by the President and the Prime Minister recently. Surendiran said that the international community should realize that the government hadn’t implemented some of the basic commitments. He said that they couldn’t be satisfied with the progress in the release of private and public land held by the military, inordinate delay in the release of political prisoners, failure to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), some disappearances, torture and sexual abuse disproportionately in the north and east compared to the rest of the country, and the military was still stationed, be it in barracks, disproportionately in the north and east. He alleged that the military had been actively engaged in what he called civilian assignments and activities.

 Surendiran acknowledged that the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government had taken a series of positive steps, including restoration of freedom of expression, the freedom to mourn the dead, the ability to demonstrate and make public protest without being intimidated and assaulted, the creation of the Office of Missing Persons and the mandate given to that Office by hopefully passing legislation, release of some of the private lands, the creation of the Constitutional Council moves to introduce a new constitution, 19th amendment to the current constitution, lifting the illegal proscription of some of the diaspora groups including GTF, ATC, CTC etc.

 The GTF declared that they remained committed to work with the government though their cooperation wouldn’t be at the expense of the Geneva resolution, which the Diaspora groups believed was central to the post-war national reconciliation process. Reconciliation couldn’t be achieved unless the issue of accountability was addressed, Surendiran said.

ALERT TO THE HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL’S 32ND SESSION

( A demonstration in front of UNHRC on disappearance s in Sri Lanka organized by Amnesty International (c)sunanda deshapriya)

08/06/2016

The UN Human Rights Council will hold its 32^nd regular session at Palais des Nations in Geneva from 13 June to 1 July 2016.

Stay up-to-date: Follow @ISHRglobal and #HRC32 on Twitter, and look out for our weekly Human Rights Council Monitor.

Alert to the Human Rights Council’s 32nd Session by Thavam Ratna

Closing window of opportunity in Sri Lanka warns Pasumai Thaayagam

08 June 2016

Sri Lanka’s window of opportunity for reconciliation will close if it fails to act on accountability and militarisation, said the Pasumai Thaayagam Foundation in a written statement to the 32nd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

In a statement endorsing the findings of an investigative report by People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL), Pasumaya Thaayagam said,

“On this line the People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) brought out a report, dated 20 April 2016 which provides details of ongoing militarization and harassment amongst the Tamil population of the North-East of Sri Lanka, over one year after the change in presidency and seven months after the election of the United National Party-led national government.”

The report found that “The diametrically-opposed narratives between the Sinhala community celebrating the war victory and the unimpeachable honour of Army forces, while Tamils simultaneously consider themselves survivors of genocide and mourn tens of thousands dead, must be genuinely confronted by a government policy that acknowledges past and present crimes against Tamils.”

It further added that “the government must respect the rights of all its peoples to self-determination, which must form the basis of any lasting political solution. But before justice and a political solution can take root, the Government must immediately take steps to demilitarize and stop all ongoing human rights violations against Tamil communities in the North-East, who have already suffered enough.”

See full statement here.
See full report here. 

Arjuna Mahendran Wants All Bond Issuance Data Deleted

June 8, 2016

In yet another underhand act, Controversial Governor of the Central Bank, Arjuna Mahendran has given out an order to delete all data in relation to the last two bond issuance from the Central Bank computers.

Arjuna Mahendran

Highly placed sources said that the staff is in a quandary whether or not to carry out Mahendran’s order, as deleting such data from the system was deemed illegal, specially as no reasons have been given as to why the details in relation to the 2015 and 2016 bond issuance must be deleted.

The sources believe that Mahendran has issued the order to hide details pertaining to the bond issuance as the Central Bank including its Monetary Board has come under increasing pressure from good governance activist and former Chairman of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce,Chandra Jayaratne who has been requesting for all information pertaining to the last two bond issuance, which are rigged in controversy.

“The data in relation to the bond issuance is also required by the Prime Minister for a Parliamentary review, and Mahendran maybe trying to sabotage this by deleting the data and blame it later on a malfunction,” the sources said.

Standard banking regulations expect all transaction data to be available for a period of 20 years.

Read More

CBSL focusing on exchange control aspects of Panama Papers dealings

By Hiran H.Senewiratne-June 8, 2016, 7:04 pm 

While releasing the Sri Lankan names the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) had revealed in relation to the Panama Papers scandal, "the Central Bank handles all the exchange control aspects with regard to the deals. These, we are now in the process of investigating, Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran told The Island Financial Review yesterday.

The names of "three offshore entities, 65 officers, seven intermediaries’ and 53 addresses related to Sri Lanka were revealed by the Panama Papers database which came online recently. These are now being investigated by the government.

Mahendran said the CBSL has already sent letters calling for explanation to the Lankan parties suspected of violating exchange control regulations, to enable them to respond in two months' time. "It takes time to take action since we are following the due process of law if anybody is found guilty, Governor Mahendran said.

"There are legitimate uses for offshore companies and trusts. We do not intend to suggest or imply that any persons, companies or other entities included in the ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database have broken the law or acted improperly, he said.

"Many people and entities have the same or similar names. We have already sent for questionable persons to respond to our queries at least within two months and confirm the identities of any individuals or entities located in the database, based on addresses or other identifiable information, he explained.

Mahendran also said they had requested original documents from their Panamanian counterparts for further investigations. As such, the CBSL was awaiting the original documents from the National Bank of Panama or ‘Banco Nacional de Panamá’. However, Panama does not have an ‘official’ Central Bank.

Mahendran stressed that the CBSL would be contacting relevant authorities, such as, the Department of Inland Revenue, to ascertain whether any Sri Lankan individuals or entities have actually figured in the scandals, under principal laws, such as, the Inland Revenue Act and the Exchange Control Act, when conducting investigations.

Earlier, Sri Lankan government officials stated that steps would be taken against those who have violated any laws, after authenticating the names revealed. "The Finance Ministry is coordinating with all relevant entities and institutions to investigate persons involved in questionable dealings, the Governor added.