Sri Lanka’s unsupervised National Olympic Committee (NOC) has been unmasked in Parliament and branded a front-runner for human trafficking that took place during last year’s Commonwealth Games in the United Kingdom.
Shady activities taking place at the NOC have never been brought to light over the years and allowed to snowball into catastrophic proportions with journalists covering the country’s Olympic sports also bought over by officials that made them ignore corrupt practices at the Apex body of sport.
But on Tuesday, Parliamentarian Chinthaka Mayadunne revealed that NOC secretary Maxwell de Silva who he accused of being involved in human trafficking, among other foul deeds, during Sri Lanka’s participation at the Commonwealth Games in England last year.
“The National Olympic Committee is the most corrupt sports body in the country. One particular group is controlling the NOC and there is mass scale corruption.
“The NOC is also involved in human trafficking to places like the United Kingdom by taking certain individuals (for the Commonwealth Games) who never returned,” Mayadunne told Parliament.
Last year the then Sports Minister Roshan Ranasinghe in a letter fired to the Director General of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) highlighted several financial misdeeds committed by the NOC but very little was done to rectify the situation or bring the culprits to book.
In the letter Ranasinghe conveyed to the OCA that Sri Lanka was represented by 116 athletes and 54 officials at the Commonwealth Games held in Birmingham and that nine athletes and an official had deserted the contingent and not returned.
Ranasinghe also charged that ten officials for reasons best known to them who were entrusted with the tour party’s welfare had turned a blind eye to the disappearance of Sri Lankan athletes from the Games Village.
It has also come to light that Maxwell de Silva had been put under investigation over misappropriation of NOC funds in 2018 and the outcome of the probe against him is pending with the Attorney General.
