Ex-Attorney General In Hot Water For Favouring Ravi Karunanayake In Money Laundering Case
March 10, 2017
Former Attorney General Yuvanjana Wijayatilake has been accused of abusing his office and for unethically granting favours to Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake.
Ravi Karunanayake
In a letter addressed to the Chairman of the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery and Corruption (CIABOC) yesterday, Nagananda Kodituwakku, an Attorney-at-Law and Public Interest Litigation Activist claimed that Wijayatilake had abused his office by offering favours to Karunanayake, which according to Kodituwakku falls within the offence of corruption as defined in the Section 70 of the Bribery Act.
In an affidavit filed along with the letter, Kodituwakku said that he had ‘credible evidence’ against the ex-Attorney General in favouring Karunanayake, in the US $ 3 million money laundering case connected to Raj Rajaratnam, the founder of the Galleon Group.
Kodituwakku claimed that ‘apparently’ due to political pressure Wijayatilake, absolutely failed to perform the public office he held as required by law, whereas in a similar case where the accused Basil Rajapaksa, a former Minister in the Rajapaksa administration, was served with a faulty indictment, the Attorney General carried out his duties as required by law by serving an indictment afresh on the accused Basil Rajapaksa.
The activist pointed out that according to law and tradition the office of the Attorney General in the Republic of Sri Lanka, holds the office endowed with powers, onerous duties and special rights in regard to matters involving the exercise of sovereignty of the people which include the Executive, Legislative and Judicial power. And the Attorney General represents and acts for the people of Sri Lanka and not for any organ of the Republic of Sri Lanka, that exercise undeniable sovereign rights of the people purely on trust.
“And it has been observed by the concerned citizens that the abuse of office by the persons who held the office of the Attorney General has already caused tremendous damage to the credibility in the office, resulting in an erosion of the people’s confidence in the office which had been openly abused to please the Executive, completely disregarding the constitutional duty vested in the person who holds the office who is under duty to perform it with due respect and regard to the sovereignty vested only in the people and those abuses have clearly resulted in the deterioration of the public trust placed in the judiciary,” he said.
Therefore, with a view to restore the public trust and confidence in the office of the Attorney General, without which the norm of representative democracy is unworkable, Kodituwakku requested the Commission to initiate a credible and independent investigation into this complaint in terms of Section 4 of the Act No 19 of 1994.
The four page affidavit by Kodituwakku submitted to the CIABOC chairman is below;
Affidavit
I, Nagananda Kodituwakku, a citizen of Sri Lanka and the UK, a public interest litigation activist, an Attorney at Law (Sri Lanka) and a Solicitor (UK), being Buddhist, currently residing at 99, Subadrarama Road, Nugegoda, do hereby solemnly and truly declare and affirm as follows:-
