Sri Lanka’s new Govt. vows to proceed with court case on bond scam
COLOMBO – Sri Lanka’s new government under President Anura Kumara Dissanayake will proceed with the legal case on the 2015 bond scam in which former leader Ranil Wickremesinghe and his close ally are being accused of being involved.
A presidential commission of inquiry found that Arjuna Mahendran, handpicked for the Central Bank Governor post in 2015 had interfered in a bond auction and had leaked inside information to help Perpetual Treasuries, owned by his son-in-law, to make billions of rupees in profits.
Mahendran raised a policy rate floor outside the regular monetary policy meeting and pressured a tender board to sell bonds at high prices, the inquiry found.
The inquiry also found that Perpetual Treasuries had paid central bank dealers, who were managing the country’s largest pension fund and other state funds, to buy bonds at high prices.
Despite the findings, the legal process could not proceed as Mahendran, a Singapore citizen, left the country saying he was going for a wedding and failed to appear before the courts.
“I think the wedding affairs should be over now. So we should be able to bring him back soon,” Cabinet Spokesman Vijitha Herath said at the weekly cabinet media briefing on Tuesday (Oct 1).
He said presidential immunity stated in the constitution had been considered for not calling Wickremesinghe to the courts.
The immunity in the past had allowed past presidents not to be accountable for their wrong decisions or to appear in the courts in legal cases against them.
“Ranil Wickremesinghe is also not the president now. So he does not have immunity. That legal case did not proceed because the immunity specified in the constitution was used. Now we have the power to bring him before the courts,” he said.
-economynext.com
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