With the impeachment battle to oust CJ Shirani Bandaranayake, where Golden Key figured saliently, now history, distraught depositors last week renewed their efforts to push for the deportation of Mrs. Sicille Kotelawala living in the United Kingdom.
“We insist that she be sent back to face the law in Sri Lanka”, Ms. Dushanthi Hapugoda, president, All GKCC Depositors’ Association, reiterated. “After all, she is a key suspect in the Rs. 26 billion scam”.
A GK delegation recently handed over a fresh petition to the British High Commission demanding her “immediate expulsion”, but a spokesperson for the mission in Colombo declined comment on whether the UK government will consider any such move or not.
“We have no comment on this issue”, she said, when contacted by The Sunday Island.Sicille, the wife of GK Chairman, Lalith Kotelawala, left Sri Lanka hours before a judicial warrant for her arrest following the collapse of this Ceylinco subsidiary in December 2008. She has remained overseas since then.
During an earlier meeting with a GK delegation, a senior British diplomat conceded that the British government had extended Mrs. Kotelawala’s visa till 2016, Hapugoda asserted. “This unprecedented move shows that she is being treated as a special case”.
“While harboring a suspect in a massive financial fraud, the British government is trying to preach on transparency and good governance to Sri Lanka”, Hapugoda protested. “We deplore these despicable double standards”.
It is shocking that UK had provided a safe haven to a suspect against whom the International Police (INTERPOL) have also issued a ‘Red Notice’, she noted. “The suspect has been described as a ‘fugitive on the run’”.
“Even prior to the diplomat’s admission, we had information she was residing in a plush section of London in the lap of luxury”, she said. “The latest we have is that she had thrown many a party during the festive season”.
These are the life-long savings of poor depositors – their blood, sweat and tears – that are being used to finance luxurious lifestyles overseas, Hapugoda continued. “This is crime at a time desperate GK investors are committing suicide in despair”.
“We have also taken up with the Sri Lankan authorities the need to seek the deportation of Mrs. Kotelawala and also adopting a tough stand against the GK directors, if they fail to honor their commitments”, she noted.
The directors were granted bail by the Supreme Court on the undertaking that they will produce a repayment plan and settle 75% of the holdings, but it has failed to materialize even two years after they were freed, she claimed.
Source: The Island (Sri Lanka)
