Mr. President abort this racket!

Monday 28th November, 2022

Some racketeers are making the most of Sri Lanka’s foreign currency crunch to put through various crooked deals on the pretext of promoting foreign investment and rake in billions of dollars at the expense of hapless Sri Lankans struggling to keep the wolf from the door. They are eyeing the country’s mineral resources among other things.

In June 2022, we exposed a sinister move by a foreign company and its local agents to carry out an ilmenite racket at Aruwakkalu, Puttalam, and the then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa promptly intervened to stop it, but six months on, the racketeers have made a comeback. They are so influential that they have gained access to President Ranil Wickremesinghe himself, who, we believe, is not au fait with the project. We hasten to add that the President is not involved in this racket; he may be driven by a genuine desire to bring in much-needed foreign investment to straighten up the economy, but some of his advisors seem to have misled him. That may be the reason why he summoned the newly-appointed Cement Corporation Chairman Jagath Dharmapriya on Friday (25) and instructed the latter to ensure that the project at issue was implemented forthwith. Sadly, the legal principle, Audi alteram partem (‘listen to the other side’), often goes unheeded!

Let the President be informed that about one and a half years ago, Sri Lanka Mineral Sands Ltd., and Sri Lanka Cement Corporation planned to embark on a joint venture to extract ilmenite found in overburden red soil removed for limestone quarrying on a 5,352-acre state land at Aruwakkalu. The project was expected to yield a great deal of foreign exchange for the country, but the aforesaid foreign firm, backed by a bunch of corrupt government politicians and officials, derailed it in a bid to secure the contract for ilmenite extraction; the country will get nothing from this firm other than royalty paid to the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau, which is a den of thieves. The rogue company claims that it will invest a considerable amount of forex in the project, but it will bring in only machinery, which will be of no use to anyone in the end. Does the government want to swap ilmenite worth billions of dollars for a heap of scrap iron? The initial investment could be recovered in a few months, according to the project documents The Island has seen. No wonder some state officials and politicians are all out to have the contract awarded to the foreign firm!

The racketeers are so influential that they even had the then Cement Corporation Chairman Gamini Ekanayake, who together with some courageous state officials vehemently opposed the corrupt deal, removed from his post. But his successor Dharmapriya has proved to be equally intrepid; he too has chosen to protect the interests of the country by opposing the shady deal on the drawing board. He deserves praise. The country needs such upright officials.

Geologists inform us that what has surfaced with top soil at Aruwakkalu is only a fraction of a huge ilmenite deposit lying underneath. Sri Lanka will gain tremendously if it can export ilmenite as a value-added product. At present, a metric ton of ilmenite without value addition fetches about USD 300 in the international market, but its price will increase to about USD 2,200 if it is exported after being processed. What prevents value addition, which consists of several phases, and is very expensive, is that not enough ilmenite is excavated in the country at present to attract a foreign investor. Experts are of the view that the shortfall could easily be met with ilmenite found at Aruwakkalu for an investor to be invited in a transparent manner. The racketeers are striving to obtain ilmenite for a song with the help of corrupt politicians and officials here and make huge profits at the expense of the country.

The racket is being carried out at the behest of an ‘educated’ politician, who pontificates ad nauseam about the virtues of good governance and pretends to be a paragon of virtue. We will name him in this column when our legal team permits us to do so. We have no civil word to say about State Minister of Primary Industries Chamara Sampath Dissanayake but, credit where it is due, he has refused to help the racketeers. Thus, it should be clear that education alone does not make a good minister.

President Wickremesinghe may not be popular but he is widely considered an intelligent leader, and one can only hope that he will ensure that the country—and not a bunch of crooked individuals including some government politicians—will gain from the exploitation of ilmenite at Aruwakkalu. We wish to draw his attention to the historic Supreme Court judgment (2000) in Bulankulama and Others v. Secretary, Ministry of Industrial Development and Others—or the Eppawala case as it is better known; it specifies how to manage the country’s mineral resources for the benefit of the present-day Sri Lankans and generations to come.

We suggest that an expert committee be appointed to study the issue at hand. It should comprise officials from the Treasury and relevant ministries, the Land Commissioner, independent experts in the fields of geology, mining and economics, environmentalists, and representatives of the Attorney General’s Department.

President Wickremesinghe had better tread cautiously on this crucial issue lest he should have his reputation sullied again. The Treasury bond scams will pale into insignificance in comparison to the mega ilmenite racket to be carried out. The UNP does not want to be worsted ignominiously at future elections as well, does it?