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| Sunday, 14 December 2003 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Rs. 135 m. fraud over potato import deal by Deepal Warnakulasuriya The Corruption Investigation Unit of the Presidential Secretariat has uncovered a fraud of over Rs. 135 million in the Uva Provincial Council. President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga has ordered the Uva Province Chief Minister A.M. Buddhadasa and its Agricultural Minister Kithsiri Senerath Attanayake to submit an immediate report in defence of the act. The 'Sunday Observer' learns that the provincial council had spent over Rs.135 million for importing some seed potatoes from The Netherlands last year. According to Investigation Unit (IU), the team from the provincial council which visited the Netherlands regarding the import deal did not include a single agriculture expert. However, the Chief Minister, a former secretary of the Irrigation Department of the Council, and another person had joined the trip to The Netherlands. The IU report indicated that the trip to The Netherlands was not valid as it had not been given the approval by an authorized officer and the team had not looked into the standard of potatoes. It has further stated that the council had stored the imported potatoes in several unusual places as it had no quality storage facilities. The report has also referred to the technical repairs of the Dambeyaya tank in the Uva Province. "Most of the transactions over the Dambeyaya tank project had been done against the tender procedure". However, the 'Sunday Observer' learns that the council had interdicted the project engineer and several others in this connection. Meanwhile, Uva Province Governor, C. Nanda Mathew, has ordered the Provincial Internal Audit Director to submit a detailed report over the Rs. 9.5 million annual budget estimate for the year 2003. |
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