“Sri Lanka’s Central Bank Robbed TRO’s Humanitarian Aid Fund”


(Tamil Insight, 19 11 2008) - A sum of approximately Rs.71million which was lying to the credit of the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) at the time the funds of the TRO were frozen, has now been forfeited to the State, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka announced on Tuesday.

“This is a daylight robbery of humanitarian aid fund”, a Tamil humanitarian aid worker commented. “Sri Lanka’s Central Bank is going bankrupt. But should it go to the level of robbing humanitarian aid fund”, he lamented.

As international non governmental humanitarian agencies have withdrawn from Vanni on the orders of Sri Lankan authorities, TRO is the only NGO there to help the internally displaced refugees who have been moving place to place because of the Sri Lankan military offensive.

Sri Lanka Central Bank’s communications department in a press release on Tuesday stated as follows:

A sum of approximately Rupees 71 million which was lying to the credit of the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) at the time the funds of the TRO were frozen, have now been forfeited to the State.

The TRO accounts were suspended in Sri Lanka in terms of the provisions of the Financial Transactions Reporting Act and the Convention on the Suppression of Terrorist Financing Act in August 2006. Such suspension was carried out on the grounds that the large sums of money received by the TRO from time to time from international non-governmental organizations, individuals, foreign entities and TRO branches in several foreign locations, purporting to be funds for humanitarian projects in Sri Lanka, were, according to intelligence reports, mainly used to finance terrorist activities, and that the money, securities or credits which were lying to its credit were being used or intended to be used for such purposes.

Investigations are yet in progress to trace and forfeit any further funds and assets belonging to the TRO. Accordingly, the general public is cautioned that they should not have any financial transactions or any other links with the TRO, or with any of its officers, since any involvement including any financial connection with a proscribed organization, is a criminal offence.

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