Billion rupee scam at Colombo port: Another corrupt deal?

Billion rupee scam at Colombo port

By Kamani Hettiarachchi - Lakmiba:

A fraud amounting to billions of rupees has been going on at the Colombo harbour in a deal to purchase rubber tyred gantry cranes, claims a reliable source at the harbour.
Minister of Ports and Civil Aviation Chamal Rajapaksa presented a cabinet paper in April for the purchase of 15 cranes for the Jaya terminal at the Colombo harbour. However, the purchase of the cranes was put off due to protests against the deal, and the supplier, Shanghai Zenguwa Port Machinery Company, informed the Ports Authority of its inability to supply the machinery.
A letter issued by Chen Kai, the General Manager of the Shanghai Zenguwa Port Machinery Company stated that the company was prepared to supply the cranes provided there was an 18% increase in the agreed price of US$ 20,730,525.
Officials from the Ports Authority then took a field tour to inspect the cranes on 28 March and had agreed to purchase the 15 cranes.
Under section 1-6 of the cabinet paper presented by Minister Rajapaksa, permission was sought to purchase the cranes from Shanghai Zenguwa without calling for fresh tenders.
Corruption Watch member, Rohana Gamage said that approval for the cabinet paper was against financial regulations. He charged that this was a case of a tender being given to a company favoured by the minister. He said that this was why there were no tenders called and the tender awarded to the paticular company even after it demanded an 18% increase from the price agreed earlier.
He said that this was not the only corrupt deal which had taken place at the Colombo port recently. There have been serious frauds in the purchase of port scanners for the harbour. However, this deal had been inconsistent with the tender proceedings and the tender had not been granted to the company which bid the lowest price of 520 million rupees. Instead, the opportunity to purchase the scanners for 1.6 million rupees was cast aside and 4 scanners had been imported at a cost of 3.9 million rupees.
Our attempts to contact Minister Rajapaksa proved futile.