Ranatunga pockets Rs.3m

One item of expenditure that should figure highly in the accounts of Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) would be the cost of foreign travel undertaken by the officials who had been globe trotting under the present interim committee at a rate never seen before.

The most travelled official of SLC is its interim committee secretary Nishantha Ranatunga and his allowances alone had cost SLC nearly Rs. 3 million in the 18 months from April 2009 to October 2010, according to a document that the “Daily Mirror” is in possession of..

During this period Ranatunga made 28 trips overseas on so-called official matters and SLC paid him a thumping amount of Rs. 2, 703, 514.45 worth of foreign exchange to be utilised as allowances.

However, SLC sources confirmed that Ranatunga made at least five more trips – one each to China for the Asian Games, to Dubai for an ICC meeting, to Bangladesh for ACC meeting and two to India for World Cup meetings after October this year. These could raise his allowances past the three-million rupee mark.

This only amounts to the allowances and does not include any other expenses such as airfare, hotel bills or other expenses.Ranatunga has claimed that all his foreign trips were approved by the interim committee headed by D.S. de Silva.

Though he is not the Chief Executive Officer of SLC, he has attended several CEO meetings of the International Cricket Council (ICC) stating that the SLC interim committee authorised him to attend those meetings as well.

The foreign sojourns of the officials were so conspicuous that newspapers were full of reports how officials were making trip after trip in the past two years.

Interestingly Ranatunga’s elder brother Arjuna, who was the SLC interim committee chairman before the present committee took office, made more than 25 overseas trips during his one year term. But nearly half of the tours the World Cup winning captain made were private tours and that raised the question whether he had enough time to attend to SLC matters with all his globe-trotting.

Now it has come to light that a total of nearly Rs. 12 million had been spent by Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) officials on foreign tours during the year 2009 as mere allowances in addition to other expenses such as airfare and hotel accommodation.The government Auditor General had observed “28 officers of the Sri Lanka Cricket had visited foreign countries on official matters and a sum of Rs. 11,958,217 had been paid to them by SLC excluding the payments of ICC/ACC during the year as foreign travel expenses”

“The payment of allowances for those officers had been made .based on the number of days approved for the relevant foreign visit by SLC without considering the actual days required to stay abroad” he had further observed.

Interestingly the Auditor General had added that the cost of foreign travel could not be satisfactorily vouched or scrutinized to verify the economy of the transactions due to the absence of documents although requested.