Interpol to nab fraudster Sakvithi

Ravi LADDUWAHETTY

The Police Department will shortly seek the assistance of Interpol to nab fraudster Sakvithi Ranasinghe who duped unsuspecting investors to the tune of Rs. 900 million and fled overseas.

“We are currently investigating as to which country he currently is in and we are getting Interpol to arrest him and deport him to Sri Lanka,” Police Media Spokesman and Senior Superintendent of Police Ranjith Gunasekera told the Daily News yesterday.

The Police Department is also on a frantic search for the stolen money and if and when they find the money, it will be handed over to Courts which will then decide the basis on which it will be returned to the duped depositors.

Police will be also lodging complaints to Court for criminal proceedings and he will be jailed, he said.

The Police will also take stringent action against any other finance companies as well if complaints from either the Central Bank and / or the public are made and if fraud is established.

It is up to the Central Bank or the public to complain to the police if there are any frauds and we will take the necessary action, he said and added that the Police cannot act in the absence of a complaint.

Meanwhile, former Chairman of the Committee on Public Enterprises ( COPE) Wijedasa Rajapakse claimed that the way the Central Bank is managing public funds was questionable.

He said the Central Bank Governor Ajith Nivaard Cabraal had claimed that the CB would put a full stop to these errant finance companies within two months since the Governor had made this proclamation on December 1, 2006 and nothing had happened since then. He said there was an alarming situation in the country’s financial system where the CB had injected Rs. 7000 million in 2003 to save depositors but had not taken any tangible steps to recover the funds.

He noted that it was an alarming situation and a precedent that the bank has set where there are media advertisement that finance companies have been blacklisted frequently when that could well have been averted had they heeded the advice offered in the COPE report which provided ample caution against mushrooming finance companies.

The Monetary Board of Sri Lanka has alerted the public that six finance companies have continued with finance business, acting in contravention of Section 37 of the Finance Companies Act No 78 of 1988 and that they were not registered and unauthorised to carry on with business.

They are Sakvithi House Constructions, Okanda Finance, Nadini Finance Sriyani Homes, Lands and Investments, D.K. Udayasiri and Piyadasa Ratnayake alias Daduvam Mudalali.