Ashley De Silva and Jerome Jayarathne, the notorious CEO and COO of Sri Lanka Cricket Board (SLC) respectively, have emerged as main culprits of board’s so called audit report, conducted by reputed international audit firm Earnest and Young ( E & Y), Cricket Age reliably learns.
On Sunday, Cricket Age had published that the SLC has deliberately leaked Earnest and Young audit report to its paid ‘messengers‘ to spreadthe lie that it’s a complete audit report and has found nothing suspicious regarding an attempted financial fraud of 5.5 USD that occurred last year, instead the attempted fraud was a result of hacking.
Cricket Age had exposed that Such claim is an attempt to undermine the upcoming government audit report, which is scheduled to be tabled in parliament on Wednesday. The plan is to undermine the government forensic audit, so later when the report will be tabled at parliament, they can claim that the board has already conducted E & Y report and it has found that the attempted fraud was a result of ‘hacking’.
Upon further investigation, it has learnt that the E & Y audit was initiated in September-October last year by then SLC Competent Authority Kamal Padmasiri. As there was no functioning cricket board at SLC at that time, Padmasiri was running the board as then Sports Minister Faizer Mustapha appointee. According to sources, at that time, Ashley and Jerome manipulated Padmasiri and covered all the wrongdoings by the previous administration, led by Thilanga Sumathipala.
Jerome, who doesn’t know anything about his job criteria instead surviving at SLC with blessings of a top politician, played a key role in manipulating Padmasiri. Ashley, who is completely incompetent, has supported Jerome in order to safeguard Punchi Borella interests.
Yesterday, after Cricket Age exposed the devil intentions of SLC to undermine government’s forensic audit, a SLC official claimed that the E & Y report was initiated by Sports Ministry.
However, when Cricket Age inquired, it learnt that Kamal Padmasiri initiated the audit as Competent Authority of SLC, not as a secretary of then Sports Minister Faizer Mustapha.
“Sports Ministry can’t initiate an audit on its own. It will be a violation of government audit procedures” a Sports Ministry official told Cricket Age.
