DailyMirror:
Government Auditor General questions absence of documents on foreign tours by cricket officials as Sri Lanka Cricket loses large amounts of funds in the name of travel,transportation and security.
A whopping figure of nearly Rs. 12 million has been spent by Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) officials by way of allowances on foreign tours during the last year and it stands prominent among other expenses running into millions of rupees now being queried by the Government Auditor General who has to audit SLC accounts for 2009.
Most of the queries raised by the Auditor General in the SLC accounts for 2009 nearly two months ago have gone unanswered and cricket officials have little or no clue on how to answer them, inside sources told the “Daily Mirror”.
“28 officers of the Sri Lanka Cricket had visited foreign countries on official matters and a sum of Rs. 11,958,217 had been paid to them by SLC excluding the payments of ICC/ACC during the year as foreign travel expenses” observed the Government auditor who had smelt a rat over the amount of money (allowances) paid to officials.
“The payment of allowances for those officers had been made based on the number of days approved for the relevant overseas visit by SLC without considering the actual number of days required to stay abroad”, the auditor observed.
While returning the query, the government auditor has added “The cost of foreign travel could not be satisfactorily vouched or scrutinized to verify the economy of the transactions due to the absence of the following documents although requested”
The documents of SLC did not furnish travel itinerary, official invitations, embarkation and disembarkation records, quotations, reports relating to the benefits for SLC on the tours if any and other related documents.
Air fare for these travels alone had cost in excess of four million rupees and the documents the Auditor had wanted to justify it include invitations from the respective country, copies of the air tickets and passports, IC approval, IC approval for additional expenses and quotations for air fare.
SLC’s Security Consultant Maj. Gen. Lawrence Fernando had spent more than Rs. 1.3 million as foreign travel allowances during 2009 but has failed to produce relevant reports to the Auditor, who had called for them in his query.
The auditor had also made a damning observation that vehicles had been hired by SLC without calling for quotations while spending a shocking Rs. 1,222,141 for transport of sports equipment to be distributed among schools.
More seriously, the auditor further observed that running charts had not been attached with the payment vouchers and certificates had not been appended to prove that the two vehicles had been actually made use of.
The auditor has exposed another major transport scandal which had taken place during the Pakistan tour of Sri Lanka between June 29 and August 12, 2009.
A jaw-dropping Rs. 4,750,682 had been paid for transport but the auditor has found some glaring misdeeds which are ridiculously obvious.
Some of his observations on the payments include, proper procurement procedure had not been followed, transport facilities had been obtained from a company other than from the firms that submitted the quotations, payments had been made without obtaining adequate documentation such as running charts, vehicle performance report and trip authentication.
Interestingly the Auditor had observed that “unbelievable” charges per kilometre had been paid to transport goods from Colombo to various cricket grounds. His examples include Galle to Colombo Rs. 235 per kilometre, Khettarama to SSC Rs. 600 per kilometre, SSC to Khettarama Rs. 3700 per kilometre and Colts ground (Colombo) to SSC (Colombo) Rs. 750 per metre.
Among many other queries raised by the Auditor are Rs. 26,296,600 to purchase pitch covers, Rs. 14,958,300 for distribution of sports equipment to schools, Rs. 15,828,365 for purchasing fitness equipment and Rs. 2,818,188 to purchase water bottles.
The present SLC Interim Committee headed by D.S. de Silva was in office from March 2009 which is the period in question.
The audited accounts of SLC had last been presented in 2007 when it was run by an interim committee headed by Jayantha Dharmadasa.
The next Interim Committee formed under the leadership of cricketer turned politician Arjuna Ranatunga who made a huge hue and cry about the financial deals of the previous interim committees, has not submitted their audited accounts to-date.
SLC inside sources revealed that the present interim committee is still struggling to answer a majority of the queries raised by the government Auditor General about the 2009 accounts and revealed that the accounts statement is unlikely to see the light of day in the near future.
According to an unconfirmed report, since the present interim took over office, SLC has suffered a total loss of more than Rs. 2 billion.