DMK link to controversial Oman oil refinery project

A Singapore-based company in which stakes are held by the family members of former Union Minister of State of India S. Jagathrakshakan of the DMK, has been linked to a record foreign direct investment of $3.85 billion in an oil refinery in Sri Lanka, The Hindu reported. 

We are aware of the Singapore company’s links to an Indian business  interest. The agreement had been signed by one Mr. Jagathrakshakan

However, the recent announcement by Sri Lanka’s Board of Investment (BoI) that the record deal has run into a controversy after Oman, which the Board said was an investor along with the Singaporean company, on Wednesday denied being part of the deal.   
The Singaporean company, Silver Park International Pte Ltd, is putting 70% of the share capital — a total of $1887 million — in the project running into billions of dollars.   
The remaining nearly $ 2,000 million, is to be raised as loan capital, sources said. Silver Park International, named by the BoI, is registered with Singapore’s national regulator Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA), with three of its four directors — Jegath Rakshagan Sundeep Anand, Jagathrakshakan Sri Nisha and Jagathrakshakan Anusuya – listed with a Chennai address. They are the son, daughter and wife of Mr. Jagathrakshakan, who is the DMK’s Arakonam Lok Sabha candidate.   “We are aware of the Singapore company’s links to an Indian business interest. The agreement had been signed by one Mr. Jagathrakshakan,” a senior government source in Colombo told The Hindu, requesting anonymity. However, the BoI has made no official mention of the involvement of an Indian business interest so far, provoking intrigue over the actual source of investment and the investors’ experience in the oil industry, especially after Oman backing out.   

The FDI was made known on Tuesday, when the BoI told a press conference in Colombo that an overseas joint venture had committed $3.85 billion to a new oil refinery — the single largest foreign investment in the country’s history — in the industrial zone coming up at Hambantota, in the Southern Province. The industrial zone adjoins the Hambantota Port, which in 2017 was leased to a Chinese state-owned enterprise for 99 years, even as Colombo struggled to service a loan from Beijing.