Rs. 13.2 bn fraud systemic failure of institutional governance: Harsha

Colombo, June 15 (Daily Mirror) - The Rs. 13 billion fraud for which National Development Bank (NDB) is involved is a catastrophic failure of institutional governance, Chairman Committee on Public Finance (CoPF) Chairman Harsha de Silva said.

"At our recent CoPF session, we questioned officials over the massive internal banking fraud. When a multi-billion rupee vulnerability goes completely undetected for over 18 months, it is a catastrophic failure of institutional governance," Dr. De Silva said in his social media post.

"Safeguarding public trust means demanding answers on where internal checks failed. We cannot let structural blind spots slide" he added.

An official from the Central Bank said the NDB has informed CoPF at the last meeting that the Rs 13 billion transaction has been part of some components of some activity and there has been an issue on it. Dr. De Silva has then told the bank Supervision unit if the Central Bank should have been more diligent in handling it without accepting the word of NDB officials.