By Dr Upul Wijayawardhana

My mind started wandering from ‘Great Pretenders’ to ‘Lovable Rogues’ after reading Dr Upatissa Pethiyagoda’s response (More about Dr. Anton (Kara) Jayasuriya: The Island, 13 January) to my piece ‘Great Pretenders’ (The Island, 30 December 2024). Being an admirer of Dr Pethiyagoda’s writings, serious consideration being given to whatever topic addressed being his hallmark, I was rather taken aback by his adoration of Kara Jayasuriya. However, I was relieved to find that he did not disagree with my premise as he concluded his piece with: “Dr. Wijewardhana was perhaps right in referring to this bold and talented entrepreneur as a “Pretender”. Nevertheless, ‘Kara’ was an amusing and engaging one, who “beat the system”!”

Reading this I wondered whether ‘lovable rogue’, perhaps, was a more apt description and a quick search led to the following explanation:

“The lovable rogue is a fictional stock character, often from a working-class upbringing, who tends to recklessly defy social norms and social conventions, but who still evokes empathy from the audience or other characters. The lovable rogue is generally male and is often trying to “beat the system” and better himself, though not by ordinary or widely accepted means.”

In fact, that my revised definition is more appropriate is confirmed by the following paragraph in Dr Pethiyagoda’s article:

“But there was a flipside. A large number of Italians who had spent a fortune to become “doctors,” were aggrieved by being refused jobs because the awarding institute was not a recognised one. They looked to our Embassy in Rome for help. Nothing could be done, other than to seek the advice of our University Grants Commission, which, as expected, replied that these qualifications had no validity, as the body concerned was not one accredited to award such degrees.”

Surely, this was a crime and why it was not investigated remains a mystery. Perhaps Anton convinced the authorities that he did not commit a crime!

I am thankful to Dr Pethiyagoda for reiterating the genius of Carlo Fonseka:

“When I inquired about that from the late Prof. Carlo Fonseka, his simple answer was that there was such a rush for Ph. D (Honoris Causa) that the best way to cope with it was to award one to a least deserving and most despicable scoundrel available to deter the more deserving ones who would recoil from being placed in such company. It apparently worked.”

This reminded me of an important fact I had forgotten to mention in my piece, that Anton offered honorary degrees to a number of council members of the Sri Lanka Medical Association. Unsurprisingly, they all refused!

I was also reminded of the greatest of lovable rogues, the biggest conman our country has ever produced; Michael Marion Emil Anacletus Pierre Savundranayagam, better known as Emil Savundra. Although best known for the failure in 1966 of Fire, Auto and Marine (FAM) Insurance Company, which he founded in 1963, that left nearly half a million of UK motorists uninsured, Savundra’s activities as a master con man started way before that.

By his high-profile, flamboyant lifestyle Savundra was able to dupe not only individuals but also governments, as well illustrated in the piece titled “The Savundra Affair: The History of an International Fraud” by Bianca Murillo, Professor of History at California State University, in the website ‘History Workshop’ (https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/empire-decolonisation/the-savundra-affair-the-history-of-an-international-fraud/). Ghana had been looking for foreign investors to develop its mining industry and Camp Bird, a company in which Savundra was a director, got involved and in fact, he had moved with his family to Accra. Prof Murillo starts her article as follows:

“On December 10, 1958, the Government of Ghana issued an urgent statement denying the claim that it had granted Camp Bird Ltd., a London-based mining and finance company, all rights to future mineral extraction in Ghana. This was a direct response to Camp Bird’s announcement in The Financial Times that Ghana’s government would not only hand over future mineral rights, but allow the company to collect ten percent of the proceeds from all existing mining firms for the next fifty years. At the time, Ghana’s income from minerals, including copper, gold, and aluminium was around £30 million a year and thus, in theory, Camp Bird would collect £3 million annually. The 1958 mineral rights dispute and its aftermath became known as the Savundra Affair. This shook Ghanaian politics and headlines splashed across the international media. Investigations raged from London to Colombo and involved government officials, bank managers, lawyers, accountants, journalists, angry shareholders, Interpol, and the Ghanaian police.”

The government of Ghana, headed by anti-colonialist Kwame Nkrumah, had been persuaded by Savundra to consider the proposal, initially, though he escaped before a deportation order could be executed, following the detection of fraud.

Savundra’s early business exploits started soon after Ceylon gained independence in 1948. During the Korean War, Savundra was used as a local intermediary in an act of economic sabotage; a shipload of oil which he appeared to be selling to the Chinese government though his American contacts had ensured did not exist!   In 1954, at age 31, Savundra was convicted of swindling the Kredietbank of Antwerp over an eight thousand tonne “phantom rice shipment” that never arrived in Portuguese Goa and was imprisoned in Belgium for fraud. However, he served only two months of the five-year sentence. His only crime in Ceylon was not paying tax due on his earnings made by economic frauds.

A less well-known fact is that Savundra was involved in the notorious ‘Profumo Affair’ as well, a scandal which led to the resignation of PM Harold Macmillan in 1963, though Macmillan gave illness as an excuse. One of the pursuits in his lavish life-style was powerboat racing and during one of these events, Savundra had a fracture of spine and had been referred by one of his friends to Stephen Ward, the high-society osteopath, who was one of the major players in that saga. Through ward, Savundra got involved with Christine Keeler, who had affairs with John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War, as well as Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attaché, raising the possibility of breaching national security. As the people involved were of much higher profile, Savundra escaped mention but was referred to as ‘the Indian Doctor’, though he was neither Indian nor a doctor, in the trial of Ward for immorality offences.

After the FAM insurance collapse, the British Press dubbed Savundra “the Prince of Conmen” and his behaviour in the interview with legendary TV talk-show host David Frost, made him a hate-figure. He called the audience, which consisted of some of his victims too, ‘peasants’ and showed no remorse for all his wrongdoings. He was jailed for eight years for the insurance fraud and died two years after release, at the age of 53.

Savundra, who led a flamboyant life and had close connections with the Catholic church, was a master conman and, no doubt, tops the league as a lovable rogue.