Harsha says ‘there is nothing to correct’; renews charge CCCC and CHEC are banned by WB
Tuesday, 25 February 2014 01:17
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With reference to the news item in the Daily FT of 24 February that the UNP had been ‘corrected’ by the China Communications and Construction Company (CCCC), UNP MP Dr. Harsha de Silva issued the following statement.
What the UNP disclosed is that CCCC and its subsidiary China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) has been debarred until January 2017 by the World Bank for fraud in the Philippines.
Perhaps the correction that should have been made is that CCCC and CHEC are not only debarred by the World Bank but also by the Asian Development Bank and several other multilateral development agencies which follow strict governance guidelines.
Besides the Philippines, there are multiple other instances across the world where CCCC and its subsidiaries have been implicated in fraud. A much publicised case is where former Bangladeshi Premier’s son Arfat ‘Koko’ Rahman was convicted of taking bribes from CHEC, deposited in an account in Singapore, on a port construction project in Chittagong.
Recently a Singapore court ordered the laundered money to be returned to Bangladesh under the UN convention against corruption.
