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By Chandani Kirinde
SriLankan Airlines (SLA) will seek legal advice to ascertain if legal action can be taken against Airbus to win compensation on the lines that prosecutors in the UK did, which resulted in the world’s second-largest airplane manufacturer having to pay a total of $ 4 billion in penalties to the UK, USA and France over claims it paid bribes to win contracts in 20 countries including Sri Lanka.
“SLA will seek legal advice on getting compensation from Airbus. We will first study the official documents released by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) of the UK, which has ruled on this matter,” Minister of Tourism and Civil Aviation Prasanna Ranatunga told Parliament yesterday.
He said SLA has also lodged a complaint with the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) over allegations that former CEO Kapila Chandrasena and his wife Priyanka Niyomali Wijenayake had accepted a bribe or commission of $ 2 million from the French plane-maker as part of the deal with the company to purchase 10 aircraft for SriLankan Airlines under a re-fleeting program in 2013.
“Action will be taken against the wrongdoers according to the advice of the Attorney General. There will be no interference in this matter by the Government. As soon as the allegations surfaced, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa promptly directed the AG to act.
There will be a fair trial and the Government has taken necessary steps to ensure that the matter will be dealt with under the law,” Ranatunga said, adding that this would be in contrast to the behaviour of the previous Government which interfered with the Judiciary as was evident from the phone recordings of MP Ranjan Ramanayake which had gone public.
The Minister said this in response to a question raised by JVP MP Anura Kumara Dissanayake on Thursday for details regarding the Airbus deal and the officials who held office at the time the agreement was finalised.
Ranatunga said Nishantha Wickremasinghe was Chairman of SLA in 2013 when the Airbus deal agreements were signed while Kapila Chandrasena was CEO. The others on the Board of Directors were Nihal Jayamanne, Shameendra Rajapaksa, Manilal Fernando, Lakshmi Sangakkara, Sanath Ukwatte and Susantha Ratnayaka.
He said that former President Maithripala Sirisena had appointed a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) to probe corruption and fraud in SLA and many officials from the airline had submitted evidence before it, but the previous Government had not acted in this regard. “There are allegations that some in the ‘Yahapalanaya’ Government hushed up the investigation for their benefit,” he said.
Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said the bribery investigation in the UK had begun in 2016 after the UK Export Finance (UKEF), a Government body, wrote to Airbus regarding the UKEF’s anti-bribery due diligence procedures in respect of agents and made specific references to UKEF’s obligation to report all suspicious circumstances to the SFO.
“We began investigating in 2017 and did not have any information till last year. We wrote to the relevant company and to Singapore last year and we had a response from Singapore on 7 November 2019. After that there was the change in Government, so we are not aware what happened to the investigation thereafter,” he said.
Wickremesinghe said the Government must get all the facts from UKEF and explore the possibility of getting compensation for the aircraft that were purchased. “The Government must also decide if we are going to obtain any more aircraft from Airbus given the bribery scandal it’s embroiled in,” he said.
UL debate in Parliament on 20 Feb.
Parliament will debate the SriLankan Airlines Airbus deal as an adjournment motion on 20 February, party leaders decided yesterday.
The motion will be moved by the UNP.
Meanwhile officials from SLA will be summoned to appear before the Parliament Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) next week, its Chairman MP Sunil Handunnetti said.
