SLC refuse to disclose suspect but Head of Finance gets centre stage in fraud attempt

By Dhammika Ratnaweera

Sri Lanka Cricket, headed by Kamal Padmasiri appointed by the Minister of Sports as competent authority to run SLC affairs called for a media briefing on Friday and said that they would not hide anything and will co-operate with the Criminal Investigation Department to ensure that the recent financial scandal will be soon resolved and the culprits will be brought to the book.

However he refused to disclose the name of the key suspect involved in the alleged transfer request of US$11.1 million to a Bank in Hong  Kong. The money was due from Sony Television for telecast rights of the forthcoming England cricket series which will commence from next October.

There were assumptions that the key suspect in the allegation is said to be the head of finance at SLC as he had already been sent on leave pending investigations by the CID and FICD.

“We are very serious about this fraud and we wanted to clear all this investigation that’s why we are getting the services of CID and FCID” said Padmasiri stating that his team especially CEO Ashley de Silva and COO Jerome Jayaratna are very keen and working hard with me to clear all this.

Ashley  de Silva the CEO of SLC said they wanted to give out everything to local media. “We saw some incorrect news especially in social media .That’s why we decided to give all details to the media. Anyway this is still at the investigation stage at FCID and CID so we cannot reveal the people involved” said de Silva.

Nevertheless he spoke about the employment criteria and the subsequent interviews and approval procedures they had to undergo when they recruited the Head of Finance to the SLC. “He is well qualified and our interview board all agreed to get his service those days” added Ashley de Silva.

He went on to say further that as a team and he being the Sri Lanka Cricket competent authority, they were happy about the progress that cricket had made in the recent past. “We concluded a very successful South African cricket series followed by Inter-provincial cricket tournament and recently concluded successful Inter District T20 tournament.” said Padmasiri.

Sri Lanka cricket team is currently in United Arab Emirates for Asia Cup ODI tournament and then will return to Sri Lanka to play England in a home seres.