Taking the country for a ride

“Is SriLankan taking Sri Lanka for a jolly good ride”, or something to that effect was the headline of an investigative article on the national carrier by a Sunday newspaper of yesteryear. Last week’s revelations that some Sri Lankans had taken the poor taxpayers of this country for a jolly good ride by pocketing kickbacks for the purchase of a fleet of Airbus aircraft should really come as no surprise.

Aircraft manufacturers bribing influential persons to sell their wares is nothing new. Lockheed, a US company, was caught bribing even the Prince of the Netherlands in the 1970s – and AirLanka went and purchased Lockheeds at the time. Boeing has long complained that Airbus was bribing at its expense.

Sri Lanka’s national airline, for years, has been a very seductive establishment for varying reasons, and for numerous persons. For politicians and senior officials, it was a place for joyrides camouflaged as official business. For others, it was a place to make money, be it from bribes on the purchase of aircraft and parts thereof, or for lesser mortals from seat reservations to duty free rackets. All this was at the expense of the public purse.

The airline from its inception, viz., Air Ceylon, Airlanka and now SriLankan has only changed names. The carnival has gone on. The way it has been (mis)managed, riddled with bribery and corruption, the inefficiency and the political meddling have continued irrespective of who was in Government. The end result is an accumulated loss of US Dollars One point two (1.2) billion (Rs. 180 billion). That is a lot of money the country can ill-afford.

Today, no international airline or business group wants to touch the national carrier given the humongous outstanding debt to be settled – and the inherent political interference that goes with the airline.

In the past, there have been Commissions of Inquiry into Air Ceylon, Airlanka and more recently two recent reports viz., the Weliamuna Report and the Presidential Commission of Inquiry headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Anil Gooneratne. While the Weliamuna Report was dismissed by the then Board of Directors of the airline as a half- baked worthless exercise that would not stand up in a court of law, no action was pursued whatsoever.

The appointment of the Presidential Commission seems to have also had a political aim of the then President. It clearly had the twin objectives of embarrassing both, the Mahinda Rajapaksa Government from 2005- 2015 and the Ranil Wickremesinghe Administration that ran the airline from 2015 onwards. By the time the independent Commission concluded its findings last July and made its recommendations, much of it against the Rajapaksa Government, the then President’s political fortunes took, to use airline jargon, a nosedive. Having then wanted a seat back in the Rajapaksa ‘airbus’, the report was virtually thrown into the Presidential wastepaper basket. It was not even tabled in Parliament.

The airline’s partnership with Emirates, one of the world’s leading airlines, though created under a cloud during the Chandrika Kumaratunga tenure, turned out to be a profitable one. That was until a hot-tempered Presidential decree later put paid to the relationship and the local airline again started making losses. It is during this period that the Airbus scandal had taken place.

In such a backdrop, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s response to last Sunday’s disclosures in the local newspapers about the Airbus bribery scandal from a UK Court, and that he will appoint a committee to go into the sordid deals will be met by the public with a sense of scepticism. “Oh yeah…here we go again” the public will say. Appointing committees and commissions has been a way out of situations for the incumbent President’s predecessors.

At least during the tenure of President J. R. Jayewardene, the entire Board of Directors was sacked after a Commission appointed by him presented its findings. In almost all other instances, by the time the Commissions make their findings known, the Boards have been reshuffled and the culprits have got away scot- free. At least in this instance, there is a suspect readily available and the Attorney General has a brief to work on.

The local courts are replete with “pending cases” of bribery and corruption. Even attempts at accelerating prosecutions with fast-tracking special High Courts have not succeeded with defence lawyers playing for time with preliminary objections and appeals on points of law. These delaying tactics are not uncommon in Courts and almost every judge who is elevated to a higher bench laments about the law’s delays at the ceremonial sitting. We see today, those who have had these bribery and corruption cases now once again holding high office of the State – from Ministers to officials. All they have to do is drag the case till the next election hoping their political masters will be back in office, which is what has happened.

Members in the current Opposition are now calling upon the Government and the Attorney General to act swiftly on the Airbus bribery allegations when they slept right through their term in office. A press release by the SriLankan Airlines Board when asked at the time why it was not acting on the Weliamuna Report gave a detailed response washing its hands of it, saying the CID, FCID, Bribery Commission, PRECIFAC and its own Board was going into the matter and the Ministers in charge of the airline were given the report.

No doubt it took time to get the bank accounts of the current suspects from Singapore and the CID had at least got a court order late last year to confiscate the passports of the current suspects, and a last ditch attempt to lift that travel ban after the UK Court report was known, failed. Otherwise, it would be yet another case like the fugitives in the MiG and Central Bank scams who are in Dubai and Singapore avoiding the long arm of justice.

Sri Lanka had to pay millions in dollars for cancelling the Airbus deal entered into by the Rajapaksa Government. It was a case of double whammy. Calls to either blacklist Airbus and/or get them to pay back the amounts by way of a fine for bribing our officials is very much in order. We need to retain foreign lawyers and set about this task probably in foreign courts.

President Rajapaksa’s pledge to eliminate corruption is now under scrutiny. The country will wait to see if his Administration is the real difference he has promised his fellow citizens. For that he must see, intervening without interfering, that the Police and the AG do not “crash the case” after the initial brouhaha. There is reason for scepticism. This Airbus bribe suspect was nominated to chair the airline again in the 52-day Government of 2018. He has friends in high places, it seems.