By P.K.Balachandran/Free Press Journal
Colombo, August 3: The Sri Lankan Supreme Court on Friday stayed the implementation of a cabinet decision to grant approval for online Visa Electronic Travel Authorization to three foreign companies with an Indian connection.
The trio are: VFS Global (an internationally known company) and its two middlemen, GBS Technology Services and IVF Global. All three have the approval of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs to collect documents for Attestation and Apostille.
The court’s order was in response to petitions filed by a number of Sri Lankans, including M.A. Sumanthiran, Patali Champika and Rauff Hakeem, who are members of the Parliamentary Committee on Public Finance (COPF).
The COPF members said that the contract to VFS was in violation of the approved procurement processes and was contrary to IMF Governance Standards. It was a serious breach of national security and had data protection concerns. It had an adverse impact on tourism. It involved middlemen giving rise to the possibility of money laundering.
Rauff Hakeem, one of the petitioners, told Daily Mirror of August 1, that there was no competitive bidding or consideration of alternative proposals.
And the cost to the traveller has been high. If the fee for a 30-day Visa from the UK to Sri Lanka is US$ 40, the “service charge” will be US$ 25.77, that is 62.5% of the Visa Fee, Hakeem pointed out.
According to the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority, there has been a significant drop in tourist arrivals since the new eVisa process came to operation. In the period Jan 1, 2024 to April 15, 2024, tourist arrivals grew by 85%. While in the period April 16, 2024 to June 30, 2024 the growth tumbled to 25%.
Previously, visa processing was done through a government Immigration Department on-line platform that was user-friendly, with online payments accruing to the government without anyone taking a commission.
Mobitel, a subsidiary of the public sector Sri Lanka Telecom, had the technology and was going to upgrade it to a multi-language platform. But the government ignored a 2021 decision to grant Mobitel authority to upgrade the system and charge a technical fee of just one dollar per application, The Island daily reported.
By giving VFS and its middlemen the contract, the government is enriching them by US$ 1.4 billion, Hakeem charged. The “opportunity cost” of US$ 1.4 billion is based on the tourist arrival assumptions submitted by the proposers and the fee structure contained in the agreement, the MP said.
Security Risk
Outsourcing of visa information gathering to foreign entities carries the risk of exposing the country to espionage and information on tourists visiting Sri Lanka.
“This could lead to breaches of the Personal Data Protection Act No. 9 of 2022, putting both individual privacy and national security at great risk,” Hakeem said.
Middlemen
The two middlemen companies, IVS Global and GBS Technology Services, according to Hakeem, “have seriously questionable and dubious backgrounds.”
According to the COPF member: “None, including the Government of Sri Lanka, is aware of the beneficial owners of these two dubious entities.
“A company search reveals GBS technology is a Singapore-based company owned by a staff member of a purported trust, which is in turn owned by a group of solicitors based in Singapore, UK, and Europe, with no record on who the beneficial owners are, thus exposing the government to potential Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Risk, based on OECD’s FATF recommendations in relation to Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financial Terrorism,” Hakeem said.
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