In a shocking turn of events, Sri Lanka Cricket Board (SLC) CEO Ashley De Silva has reportedly changed the authorised signatory of the board and has issued millions of cheques worth millions without the knowledge/approval of newly appointed Sports Minister Harin Fernando, Cricket Age reliably learns.
On December 20, Harin Fernando took over as Sri Lanka’s new Sports Minister after Prime Minister Ranil Wickramsinghe led UNP government was reestablished.
Until then previous Sports Minister Faizer Mustapha’s secretary Kamal Padmasiri was overseeing the SLC. However after the arrival of Harin, Kamal Padmasiri post became dysfunctional.
According to sources, during this period when there was no competent authority at SLC, Ashley De Silva sensed the opportunity and changed the board signatory without the approval or knowledge of Harin. Along with SLC COO Jerome Jayarathne, Ashley De Silva violated the SLC Financial rules and regulations and issued cheques at will.
It is noteworthy that in recent months, SLC has been battling with plenty of corruption charges. The millions dollars fraud attempt stunned each and everyone in Sri Lanka cricket. After that SLC tried to salvage it’s pride by talking big against fraud and corruption. However, giving big statements about corruption looks illogical when even the board CEO and COO are violating financial rules and regulations.
“It is like a day-light robbery. In match fixing, a third party gets involved. But here, the CEO of SLC himself is involved. How can he issues payments as a sole signatory without the approval of Sports Ministry” an insider at SLC told Cricket Age.
Cricket Age has published over and again that Ashley De Silva is completely incompetent and does not deserve to be CEO! Ashley De Silva has always been driven by Punchi Borella and in order to fulfil his ‘Boss’ wishes, he ends up putting Sports Ministers in trouble. Along with Jerome, Ashley did the same things with Faizer Mustapha and completely buried his image.
Now, it seems, Ashley has set his sight on Harin! Just few days ago, Ashley misled Harin about the appointment of various committees at SLC. Those committees were appointed with the approval of the genuine stakeholders of SLC to run the cricket smoothly. However, Ashley presented the situation to Harin, like those committees were politicalally appointed. As a result, newly appointed Sports Minister has turned all the committees as dysfunctional.
Harin Fernando is new to the SLC and right now he is flying high! However, he needs to be careful. If he will continue to listen Ashley and continue to take his advice, his image will also be buried soon, as Ashley gets all the directions from Punchi Borella!
