German national hotel owner speaks

20 March 2013 07:53 am

Ditmar Doering the owner of the Hotel located in Marawila, which was raided by the Walana Anti Vice squad for allegedly supplying females to foreign guests, speaking to Daily Mirror online denied any involvement of himself and his management in the running of the illegal operation.

Earlier, the Walana Anti Vice squad arrested an employee of the hotel, three females aged 19,21, and 26 and a person alleged to have transported the females to the hotel for alleged prostitution.

Speaking to Daily Mirror Online, Doering denied any involvement in the incident and said he will give his fullest support to pursue justice.(H.F)


Following is the audio statement of Mr. Doerring


I have been living in Sri Lanka for the last 30 years. I’m a hotelier. I own 3 hotels- each located in Maravila, Naththandiya and Nilaweli. For the last thirty years I was very much involved in sports tourism and you can say almost 5,000 German sports people during the last 30 years had visited Sri Lanka and participated in sports programmes.
 
I was also the Chairman of the Asian German sports exchange programme and have sent more than 20 Sri Lankan sports teams abroad including the Volley Ball teams of the Navy Airforce and the Army,.

Throughout my years as a businessman in the country I have never for a single minute or a day engaged myself in illegal activities, not at all.
 I was very shocked to see the news carried in your website which said – ‘a brothel owned by a German', they didn’t mention my name but the reference is clear, that there is a brothel existing in Naththandiya.

What really happened was one of my minor staff employees- a maintenance supervisor who maintains the pool and the site, he has obviously made a telephone call to someone who had brought a lady to the site to one of the guests who was staying.

This has been done without the approval or knowledge of the management. The lady manager on duty confirmed that she did not know about it and of course the Director and I as the owner had no knowledge of it. We were never supporting this sort of activity.

However, such a thing has happened and the Police have raided the place. It is very unfortunate that it was organized by the maintenance supervisor and we had nothing to do with it. He had been charged in the Marawila courts and has been remanded and I hope justice will take place.

I will like to rectify the news here because it has tarnished my image as a reputed businessman who has been doing business in this country for over three decades and also as a philanthropist I want to state that this was beyond the control of the owner and beyond the control of the management.

The truth will anyway come out and we as the management and I as the owner were completely unaware. We have never been involved in any sort of criminal activities during our  time in Sri Lanka.

I would be pleased if you could publish this.

Thank you