Purported Oil Hedging Deals: Nihal Sri Questions Attorney General
“By your submissions, you held out an unqualified assurance and guarantee, that you will most certainly succeed in the above foreign legal proceedings against the Government of Sri Lanka and the CPC, and that therefore no payments, whatsoever, would thereby have to be made from public funds to the Respondents Banks, under these illegal deals as admitted by you, and accordingly that you would also recover the costs, reckoned to be in the region of Rs. 150 Mn. incurred utilizing public funds, to defend these foreign legal proceedings, in retaining foreign Counsel and Experts, including costs incurred in overseas travel by you and other Counsel.” Nihal Sri Ameresekere has today written to Attorney General Palitha Fernando.
Nihal Sri Ameresekere
Public Interest Litigator Nihal Sri Ameresekere wrote “In addition, on 11.5.2010 you reiterated to the Supreme Court the averments in the Statement of Objections of the CPC, settled by you, in SC (FR) Application No. 404/2009, concurring with my stances taken in the said Application, that – ‘the said transactions are illegal, ultra-vires and/or unauthorized and that the Respondent Banks had misrepresented the true nature of the these transactions and that they are inter-alia null and void and/or unenforceable’. Does not such stance on your part demonstrate the reality that you did not want the truth and facts being disclosed to the public, whereas this involves colossal funds of the public ? “
Questioning the legal cost he wrote “Costs of defending foreign legal proceedings are not disclosed to the public, but based upon an answer given in Parliament by Minister of Petroleum Industries, Susil Premajayantha in August 2012, I reckon the same to be in the region of Rs. 500 Mn. Is this not indeed catastrophic, when compared to the fact that the Budget for the entire year’s operation of 2013 of the Attorney General Department is only Rs. 434 Mn., and Capital Expenditure of only Rs. 29.3 Mn., as per the Appropriation Bill 2012 ?”
We publish the letter in full below, alternatively you can read it here
BY COURIER
5th November 2012
URGENT / IMPORTANT
