COLOMBO – Former Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake, former group director Perpetual Treasuries Arjun Aloysius and six others were remanded until Monday (23), by the Special High Court hearing the 2016 Central Bank Bonds scam. Later Karunanayake, Aloysius and five other were taken to the Welikada Prison, while the 8th person remanded was directed to the quarantine centre of the prison. Among those remanded were also several Central Bank officials.
When the case was called up Wednesday (17), Karunanayake’s lawyers led by Faiz Mustapha asked the three-member Trial-at-Bar to release the accused on previously agreed bail conditions. However Senior Deputy Solicitor General Haripriya Jayasundera appearing for the State objected to bail, leading to the three judges, Damith Thotawatte, Mohamed Irshedeen and Manjula Thilakaratne ordering the accused be remanded until Monday.
Earlier on Wednesday, Attorney General (AG) Dappula de Livera filed indictments before two Special Courts hearing the cases pertaining to the bond auctions conducted on March 29 and 31, 2016. He alleged Perpetual Treasuries Limited (PTL) had used the Central Bank’s important undisclosed information to artificially alter the final outcome of the Treasury Bond auction, that the fraud had caused injustice to other primary sellers in the bond market and that PTL had acted cunningly, made a huge profit and conspired to cause a huge loss to the government.
Arjuna Mahendran, the father-in-Law of Perpetual Treasuries chief Aloysius was the governor of the Central Bank at the time of the auction and Former Central Bank Deputy Governor P. Samarasiri was in charge of debt sales in 2015 and 2016 when the scams took place.
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