SLN provided OBST before Avant Garde - Navy Chief

People are saying that the SL Navy is incurring loses. It is wrong. All we did was one component of this operation

Navy Commander Travis Sinniah said that the Navy was providing On-board Security Teams (OBST) operations long before Avant Garde came in to the equation and it was handed over to them on a platter by the previous government.

He said it was the Navy that initially came up with the concept of providing OBST operations for commercial vessels and they ran this operation entirely by themselves for nearly two years.

“Long before Avant Garde came in to the equation, the SLN was running this operation nearly two years by ourselves. Avant Garde was a small scale security organisation in Sri Lanka. They somehow managed to convince the government that they could do a better job. The whole operation was handed over on a platter by the commander at that time to a private company. That is how it became an Avant Garde operation. Navy protected the weapons that went in and out,” he said.

“People are saying that the SL Navy is incurring loses. It is wrong. All we did was one component of this operation. Avant Garde took the monopoly of every others’ businesses and they did it cumulatively as ‘one company’. Today we have taken back our component from this operation, that is the safety weapons and the people who handled them,” Rear Admiral Sinniah said.

When asked weather Sri Lanka Navy is using the weapons seized from Avant Garde vessel, but the commander refuted the claims and said the Navy does not use any weapons seized from the Avant Garde vessel, since it has its own arsenal.