Vallibel One rebuts anonymous message circulated on social media

Vallibel One PLC yesterday issued a statement to the Colombo Stock Exchange refuting the anonymous, yet adverse message circulated on social media.

Following is the full statement:

Our attention has been drawn to an anonymous message which is being circulated on social media under the caption “Vallibel One’s Rs. 163 billion Conundrum: A financial Thriller Unfolds Amidst Political Ambitions”.

We regret to note that the message appears to have been published with mischievous intent. The author of the publication, resorting to verbiage and a blatant distortion of facts has twisted a prudent application of policies by the company to cast sinister aspersions on the ultimate majority shareholder of the company, for political purposes. The circulated message states that the company is faced with a serious crisis referring to a “Rs. 163 billion set aside for expected credit losses”, which is manifestly false. In fact, the figure, Rs. 163 billion represents the Net amount of Loans and Advances of the Group.

It has also been implied that provisioning has been made following intervention by “financial watchdogs”. This is also false, and we wish to highlight that the Group has consistently followed a prudent and conservative application of provisioning policies in accordance with the regulatory requirements and there was no intervention or compulsion whatsoever by any external party. We also wish the address the insinuations made that there were delayed disclosures by the company.

The facts are that after the Annual Report was published on the CSE Website on 5 June 2024 at 8:39 a.m., the company noticed that there had been an inadvertent omission of a single column on page 128 upon which it promptly published an errata on 6 June 2024. Significantly, the omitted information did not have any relevance to matters referred to in the message.

Additionally, both the Annual Report and the errata were uploaded to the CSE Website by the Company Secretaries – P.W. Corporate Secretarial Ltd. whereas the writer of this anonymous message makes reference to a letter by PWC further misleading the public that it is a letter by an Auditor, as PWC was the commonly abbreviated term for the Audit Firm formerly known as PricewaterhouseCoopers.