Mahinda refuses to attend anti-graft body

Tuesday, 21 April 2015 01:32 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Reuters: Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa will not appear before an anti-bribery commission investigating allegations that he may have illegally induced a rival to support his campaign during the recent presidential elections. Rajapaksa will ignore a summons to appear on 24 April because the exact nature of the complaint and the person making the allegations have not been disclosed, Rohan Weliwita, Rajapaksa’s media adviser, told Reuters. “He is consulting his legal team on the summons,” Weliwita said. The allegations are the latest in a series of corruption charges made against Rajapaksa by Sri Lanka’s new Government, which has ordered an investigation into all the financial deals he made during his decade in power. Rajapaksa is accused by his rivals of unfairly pressuring Opposition Leader Tissa Attanayake to back his campaign. After Attanayake supported Rajapaksa’s presidential bid in December, he was appointed the Health Minister. Opposition politicians and civil society organisations have in the past accused Rajapaksa of recruiting rivals by offering them bribes. Rajapaksa has denied these allegations. More than 50 Opposition legislators on Monday protested in Parliament and wrote a letter to President Sirisena objecting to Rajapaksa’s summons. “According to the existing Sri Lankan laws, giving or receiving a minister post is not considered as a bribe,” the legislators said in the letter. “If this is a bribe, none of the presidents could exercise their power vested by the Constitution.” The Government has already said Sri Lankan investigators have located more than $2 billion secretly transferred to accounts in Dubai by people close to Rajapaksa during his rule. Rajapaksa denied allegations his family illegally stashed money overseas in a statement on Monday. “I would like to categorically state for the information of the public that neither I, my wife, nor my sons, maintain any illegal or secret offshore accounts in any foreign bank,” the statement said. Local media also reported that Rajapaksa’s brother and former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa had been summoned to appear before the anti-graft body on 23 and 27 April.

MR sees it as a Government gift

Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa says he had received a gift from the new Government in the form of a letter asking him to appear before the Bribery and Corruption Commission this week. Speaking at an event yesterday, the former President said that he was amused when he found that the allegation raised against him was that he had appointed former United National Party (UNP) General Secretary Tissa Attanayake as a Minister. Rajapaksa said that when he was President he had every right to appoint a Cabinet Minister and so found it hard to believe how he is going to be questioned over that by the Bribery and Corruption Commission. The former President also said that Sri Lanka’s national security was now under threat as a result of some of the actions of the new Government.

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