Upali Wijewardene

Upali Wijewardana as a young child

Born on 17 February 1938 to the wealthy Wijewardene family from Kelaniya, he was the only son of Don Walter Tudugalle Wijewardene and Anula Kalyanawathie Wijewardene. He had two older sisters, Anoja and Kalyani. His father was invloved in the family business that was started by Upali Wijewardana's grandfather Muhandiram Don Phillip Wijeywardene and was the younger brother of the press baron Don Richard Wijewardena. Wijeywardene lost his father when he was eighteen months old and was raised by mother that the family home Sedawatte Walawwe in Kolonnawa.[4]

He attended primary school at the Colombo Girls' College with his two older sisters and thereafter attended Royal College, Colombo. He entered Queens' College, Cambridge in 1953.[4]

On his return to Ceylon, Wijewardene joined the British company Lever Brothers as a management trainee and was placed in charge of soap processing. He soon left Lever Brothers following a disagreement with its British Chairman. He then went into the confectionary business on his own by running a candy ball machine to his own land on Bloemendal Road, with little prior knowledge. This venture would develop in to the brand called 'Delta Toffee'.[3] He expanded his confectionary business after his uncle Senator Sarath Chandradasa Wijesinghe gave him substantial shares of his Ceylon Chocolates Company, which Wijewardene developed into the 'Kandos chocolates' brand.[4]

Diversifying his holdings, he founded the Upali Group of Companies during the mid-1960s as he developed a conglomerate of companies.[5][6] With the help of his friend Ratnam, he cultivated 14,000 acres of cocoa in Malaysia and was able to market "Kandos Chocolate" to the world.[3]

Upali Group of Companies achieved global fame by manufacturing chocolates and confectionery under the names of Kandos, Delta, soaps under Crystal, Tingle Sikuru, and appliances such as radios and air-conditioners under the brand name Unic, many of which are still in existence today. In the aviation sector, he made introduced the brand Upali Air, operating several aircraft for private, domestic and international flights.[3] As an investor, Upali made significant investments in Malaysia and Singapore and was in the process of opening offices in New York.

In the meantime, he started Upali Newspapers and published daily and weekly newspapers including Divaina, The Island and Navaliya. Following a new method of distributing newspapers, he used his own aircraft to deliver newspapers to remote areas such as Anuradhapura and Jaffna before 8 am. In 1980, he traveled to Silicon Valley and signed five agreements there, including one with Motorola.[2] The construction of chip plants started in 1983, but the Sri Lankan Civil war brought bombing over the country, killed some of the engineers assigned to the construction of the plants, which led the chip manufacturers to leave Sri Lanka in favour of Malaysia.[7]

In February 1981, he published a comic Chithra Mithra. Within a few months, the magazine reached a circulation of 200,000. Media initially described the magazine as "romance, booze, money, travel, dreams, adventure, wild women" crammed into 16 pages.[2] It expanded into 32 pages with a different story on every page. Editor Janaka Ratnayake noted that the publication had "many topics-romance, detective, sci-fi, heroes, two pages built around movie stars, and almost a page of pen pal" (1993). All the stories were serialised and in black and white with a spot of one color.[8] The comic magazine fell apart after Wijewardene's death and ceased publication in 1986 with a circulation of 15,000. Ratnayake cited the failure of the magazine to Wijewardene's early death, the sub-standard printing quality of the paper due to unskilled mechanics and competition from other magazines.[8]

A British journalist, Matt Miller, described him in Insight Magazine: "Largely through bravado and wit, Philip Upali Wijewardene parlayed a bankrupt confectionery plant into Sri Lanka’s only multi national business group and one of Asia’s leading cocoa based products conglomerates. Intriguingly he accomplished his overseas empire-building at a time when his country strictly prohibited the export of currency. And now the 43-year-old commodity wizard (this was 1981) has started what could be Upali's Third Plan... He would be willing, he says with uncharacteristic restraint, to become Sri Lanka's president someday".

Upali Wijewardene was influential in restarting horse racing at the Nuwara Eliya Race Course. He was the chairman Board of Stewards of the Sri Lanka Turf Club and was a keen turfite who raced in Sri Lanka and England, where his horse "Rasa Penang" won the Jersey Stakes at Royal Ascot, ridden by the world-famous jockey Lester Piggott.

In 1980 he also won the Singapore Derby at the Bukit Timah Race Course in Singapore and the Perak Derby at the Perak Turf Club in Malaysia with his horse, named "Vaaron". He raced "General Atty" too and won many races in England. He flew to all these countries where his horses were racing, in his private aircraft. He made it a point to fly from Newmarket Racecourse in England to Nuwara Eliya Racecourse in Sri Lanka to watch his horses and ponies racing there.

In 1978, Upali Wijewardene was appointed by President J. R. Jayewardene as the first Director General of the Greater Colombo Economic Commission (GCEC) which evolved in to what is now the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan political establishment did not favor his arrival in politics.[7] In this position, Wijewardene worked to attract foreign investment to develop local industries in the new open economy. He formed Free Trade Zones in Katunayake, Biyagama and Koggala.[2] He set up an organization called 'Ruhunu Udanaya' and worked hard to create opportunities for young people in Kamburupitiya and the surrounding areas to learn English and computer technology.[3]

Learjet 35A

Upali was licensed as a pilot at the time, spent about 20 million rupees in local currency and added another controller to the rear body in addition to the pilot controller.[3] On 13 February 1983, his private jet, a Learjet 35A, took off from Kuala Lumpur at 8:41 pm, bound for Colombo. When Upali arrived in Colombo, he would be named the Finance Minister of Sri Lanka the next day, thereby replacing Ronnie de Mel by the President J. R. Jayewardene. On board with him were his Malaysian lawyer S.M. Ratnam, Upali Group Director Ananda Peli Muhandiram, pilot Capt. Noel Anandappa, co-pilot Sydney Soysa, and steward S. Senenakye. Fifteen minutes later, the aircraft disappeared while flying over the Straits of Malacca. Extensive search operations by air and naval units of Sri Lanka, India, the United States, the Soviet Union, Australia, Indonesia, and Malaysia failed to locate any evidence of a crash.[9][10]

A wheel suspected to be part of the disappeared plane was found on Pandang Island led the authority to conclude to a mid-air explosion. Later investigations revealed that this wheel was not manufactured by the manufacturer of the plane.[11] According to K. Godage, former Malaysian High Commissioner, the government of Sri Lanka did not show interest in further investigating the disappearance.[7]

Upali Wijewardene was a cousin of President J. R. Jayewardene[4] and scientist Ray Wijewardene.[12] In 1975, he married Lakmini Ratwatte, daughter of Dr Seevali Ratwatte, brother of Sirimavo Bandaranaike. She is the granddaughter of Barnes Ratwatte Dissawa.[13] His brothers-in-law were General Sepala Attygalle and Professor Stanley Wijesundera. He grew up in his ancestral home the Sedawatta Walawwa and moved to his own house in Thurstan Road designed by Geoffrey Bawa which included its own helipad for his private helicopter. He also had a country house the Sunnycroft Bungalow in Nuwara Eliya.[14] He was the Basnayake Nilame (chief lay custodian) of the Kelaniya Raja Maha Vihara which had been supported by his family.[4] An amateur racing enthusiast, Wijewardene raced his mother's Opel Kapitan at the Katukurunde Races in the early 1960s.<ref>

• List of people who disappeared
• Upali Air
• Upali Newspapers

• De Silva, Mervyn (31 March 1983). "Sri Lankan millionaire Upali Wijewardene goes missing in his Learjet, massive search on". India Today.

• Wijewardene House, Colombo, Sri Lanka