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Thursday, 12 November 2015 00:05 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
By Charumini de Silva
The Golden Key Depositors Association will appeal to the Chief Justice to reopen their case against the company after the Government failed to meet its October deadline for the second round of repayments.
The association insists apart from the first tranche which disbursed Rs.556 million among 2,536 depositors in August (below Rs.2 million deposits), the Government has failed to continue payment to depositors thereafter.“We were supposed to get the second tranche of Rs. 4.2 billion on 4 October for deposits worth of Rs. 2 million to Rs. 10 million, but we have not received anything thus far,” Golden Key Depositors Association President Dushanthi Hapugoda told the Daily FT.
According to the settlement plan, the Government was to pay deposits below Rs. 10 million by October and those above Rs. 10 million by August 2016.
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She said when the association members met Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake last Wednesday (4), he had told them that the Government was unable to make any payments until end December or early January.
“This is clearly not the response we expected from a responsible Government official and clearly not what we fought for in the past seven years. We trusted the Minister and Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran for the assurance they provided with the settlement plan. We are now in great trouble with no case to fight back with,” she stressed.
She went on to say that this was the very reason why they did not want to withdraw their case until the Government pays the last depositor.
“This was just a ‘public stunt’. The Government created a sudden rush about the whole case of Golden Key and set free the culprits of the case especially Lalith Kotelawala,” she charged.
Therefore, she said that they will now seeking the CJ’s approval to reopen the case as soon as possible, until every depositor is paid according to the Government endorsed settlement plan.
Hapugoda also said that they were seeking permission from the Supreme Court to close down the Golden Key Company, alleging it incurs heavy operating costs, which in actual terms is not doing anything beneficial for its depositors.
“Earlier on in the negotiations it was said that the Central Bank would take the company under its purview, but it never happened. The company is spending around Rs.2 million monthly just on salaries,” she said.
