By Saman Indrajith

SLMC leader Rauff Hakeem on Wednesday in parliament threatened to bring contempt of court charges against Controller Immigration and Emigration and Secretary to the Ministry of Public Security if they continue to sabotage an order given by the Supreme Court to revert to the previously existing online visa system.

Participating in a debate on the Mid – Year Fiscal Position Report – 2024, Hakeem said that there was information and facts to prove that these two officials deliberately engaged in sabotaging the Supreme Court order and hiding facts that would reveal those who had been involvement in the VFS-visa scam.

“We warn these officials to stop these underhand efforts to sabotage the implementation of the Supreme Court order immediately. If not, we’ll bring charges of contempt of court against them,” Hakeem said.

The SLMC leader said that after the Supreme Court gave an interim order to revert to the online visa system status quo ante, the Controller Immigration had redirected online visa applicants from the official website www.eta.gov.lk to a private website www.srilankaevisa.lk. This is a dubious web site belonging to a private company of which the proprietors cannot be found. When checked we found that the domain.lk registry too has no registration of this website. This is illegal and against the Supreme Court order.

“The VFS-Visa scam is a broad daylight robbery. This scam had been planned to earn 100 times more than the amount of money pocketed off from the Bond Scam. We provided the facts to the Supreme Court too. Since 2021 the Mobitel Company coming under Sri Lanka Telecom of the government had been providing the online visa application services to the visitors to this country. When they introduced the electronic travel authorization system in 2021, it was for the first time not only in the South Asian region but also in near eastern destinations.

Mobitel was given an international award for their innovation. This system needed to be upgraded when there was an increase in the load of applications. So, they prepared an upgrading plan and submitted it to the relevant authorities. Within a week, a cabinet paper had been prepared and the job was given to two private companies based in Singapore and Dubai. These two companies are middlemen, and they had VFS Global as their technical partner. The VFS charges 50 US dollar cents from a person travelling to India from Malaysia. The charge is the same when a person travels to India from Indonesia. The amount charged by this private entity when a person enters Sri Lanka is 25 US dollars. Had Mobitel been allowed to make such charges, it could have earned 1.74 billion US dollars – an amount equal to 35.5% of the IMF bailout package to this country.

The project from its start had been dubious. It was made on the basis of an unsolicited proposal. The cabinet had been told that they would give 200 million US dollars to upgrade our system. But there is no such mention in the agreement. The cabinet had been fed with lies to get its approval.

After the court order was given, we summoned Mobitel Chairman before the parliamentary committee and found that they had sent their technicians to the Department of Immigration and Emigration, but the Controller was reluctant to support reverting to the previously existing system. The technicians have not been given access to the system. They have been given access only to the Front End of the system while the controller has prevented their access to the Back End. This is deliberate sabotage.

“Almost all these officials including the Controller Immigration and Secretary to the Ministry of Public Security trying to scuttle the investigations into the VFS-Visa scam and reversing the previous system are from a single ministry.

“Now the Sri Lanka Telecom is listed to be sold off. Its value has been stated as USD 200 million. Had this contract been given to them instead of a private consortium, the SLT’s value would have been now at USD 800 million.

“We demand that these officials stop hindering investigations and sabotaging the court order to hide the names of fraudsters because they would soon be in trouble. If they won’t stop the sabotage moves, we will bring contempt of court charges against them,” Hakeem said.