Canadians Continues To Fund Corrupt ICES Even After A Damning Evaluation Report

By Muttukrishna Sarvananthan –January 24, 2016

Dr. Muttukrishna Sarvananthan

This expose` is sequel to an earlier expose` of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES), Colombo, Sri Lanka, published online in Colombo Telegraph on January 17, 2016.

While the previous expose` revealed the process of research fraud committed by the ICES on an on-going research and advocacy project (Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women – GrOW Sri Lanka) funded jointly by the Department for International Development (DfID, UK), International Development Research Centre (IDRC, Canada) and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (USA) and administered by the IDRC, this expose` will reveal financial fraud committed by the ICES on two research projects funded by the IDRC from 2006-7 to 2008-9, according to an evaluation commissioned by the Peace, Conflict and Development (PCD) Programme of the IDRC. Dr. Mark Hoffman of the Department of International Relations, London School of Economics was the author of the foregoing Evaluation Report dated May 2009 who undertook fieldwork in Sri Lanka for this evaluation in October 2008.

Since I did not receive my salary for over two months since the commencement of the GrOW Sri Lanka project, on December 15, 2014 I wrote to Mano Buckshi (Grant Administrator at the IDRC, Ottawa) (copied to Madiha Ahmed) telling him that “I suspect that the GrOW money is being spent on other activities of the ICES which is why the delay in payment of my salary, buying laptops, and hiring personnel. This is my speculation because I do not have any evidence. I cannot figure-out any other reason for the foregoing delays.” The Grant Administrator assured me that “we will certainly consider your account of how the project is unfolding when the program visits with the institution and its project staff in early 2015 as part of our regular monitoring. We would expect ICES to honour its contractual obligations and hopefully the issues you have raised and from which you are directly impacted will be resolved shortly.”

The Senior Programme Specialist overseeing the GrOW Sri Lanka project in Ottawa, Madiha Ahmed, and Dr. Navsharan Singh (Senior Programme Officer) from the Asia Regional Office in New Delhi visited Colombo and the Northern Province in early February 2015. Madiha Ahmed told me that the IDRC Regional Office in New Delhi will conduct an audit of the GrOW Sri Lanka financial accounts at the ICES. During a Skype conversation with me on August 07, 2015, Madiha claimed that IDRC did not find any financial irregularity in their audit of the project accounts at ICES and promised to send me the audit report, which I have not received to date (January 2016). However, Mark Hoffman in his Evaluation Report dated May 2009 has revealed the same financial fraud at the ICES, which I had suspected in GrOW Sri Lanka project, in two previous projects funded by the PCD / IDRC during 2006-7 to 2008-9.                             Read More