The activities of the LTTE abroad - including extortion, narcotics trafficking and credit card fraud - have a negative impact on the countries and societies that host its presence, the prestigious Jane’s Intelligence Review said over the weekend.The Tigers financial and procurement structure is well organised and strategically positioned around the globe, Jane’s said in an expose of LTTE funding mechanisms.
“The organisation fulfils its financial and procurement needs abroad. Far from the primary theatre of conflict, the LTTE depends on a complex global network of professional managers and outsourced people who acquire money and guns in countries with significant Tamil diaspora communities,” it said. Through its licit and illicit businesses and fronts, the Tigers generate an estimated US$ 200 to 300 million per year.
“After accounting for its estimated US$ 8 million per year of costs within LTTE-administered Sri Lanka, the profit margin of its operating budget would likely be the envy of any multinational corporation,” Jane’s pointed out.
It noted that LTTE loyalists tend to fill the ranks of the two principal directorates that manage the interlocking aims of raising money and buying weapons. However, lower down the chain of command LTTE members tend to act as outsourced agents driven as much by profit as any ideological commitment to creating a Tamil state in Sri Lanka.
The two overarching financial and procurement bodies are the Aiyanna Group, directed by Pottu Amman, and the Office of Overseas Purchases, directed by Kumaran Pathmanathan, alias KP, and source of the office’s nickname, the KP Department. Both men have extant Interpol Red Notices listed against them.
The Aiyanna Group functions as the Tigers’ clandestine intelligence and operations body, and likely to be responsible for monitoring and ensuring the organisation’s financial support and revenue streams. The Aiyanna Group’s global management allegedly acts as overseer among Tamil communities in Western countries through LTTE front organisations.
The Office of Overseas Purchases or KP Department is most probably the LTTE’s procurement arm. Although Vaithilingam Sornalingam, alias ‘Colonel’ Shankar, created the unit (the now-deceased Canadian Tamil who also founded the LTTE’s Air and Sea Tiger wings), KP allegedly directs its activities at present.
The second most-wanted man in Sri Lanka, Pathmanathan is a highly competent and elusive operative. The KP Department has reportedly sourced arms in various countries and operates a fleet of deep-sea vessels, known as the Sea Pigeons.
Normally registered in Panama, Honduras or Liberia, the Sea Pigeons are primarily tasked with the delivery of procured weapons to LTTE bases in Sri Lanka and may also be in other LTTE enterprises, legal or otherwise.
The Aiyanna Group and KP Department cadres are strategically placed internationally to correspond closely to Sri Lankan Tamil enclaves, which provide the main source of LTTE money, manpower and weapons.The geographical distribution of Tamil communities enables the LTTE to use them as networked operations centres, Jane’s said.
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