{"id":40769,"date":"2015-04-20T19:18:06","date_gmt":"2015-04-20T23:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=40769"},"modified":"2015-04-20T22:20:20","modified_gmt":"2015-04-21T02:20:20","slug":"mahinda-rajapaksa-will-ignore-summons-issued-by-bribery-commission-and-not-appear-before-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=40769","title":{"rendered":"Mahinda Rajapaksa Will “Ignore” Summons Issued by Bribery Commission and not Appear Before it."},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Former<\/a>

Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa at a campaign rally for the Jan 8th presidential election<\/p><\/div>\n

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\u2019s media adviser, told Reuters.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is consulting his legal team on the summons,\u201d Weliwita said.<\/p>\n

The allegations are the latest in a series of corruption charges made against Rajapaksa by Sri Lanka\u2019s new Government, which has ordered an investigation into all the financial deals he made during his decade in power.<\/p>\n

Rajapaksa is accused by his rivals of unfairly pressuring Opposition Leader Tissa Attanayake to back his campaign. After Attanayake supported Rajapaksa\u2019s presidential bid in December, he was appointed the Health Minister.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Opposition politicians and civil society organisations have in the past accused Rajapaksa of recruiting rivals by offering them bribes. Rajapaksa has denied these allegations.<\/p>\n

More than 50 Opposition legislators on Monday protested in Parliament and wrote a letter to President Sirisena objecting to Rajapaksa\u2019s summons.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to the existing Sri Lankan laws, giving or receiving a minister post is not considered as a bribe,\u201d the legislators said in the letter. \u201cIf this is a bribe, none of the presidents could exercise their power vested by the Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Rajapaksa denied allegations his family illegally stashed money overseas in a statement on Monday.
\n\u201cI 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,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n

Local media also reported that Rajapaksa\u2019s brother and former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa had been summoned to appear before the anti-graft body on 23 and 27 April.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Mahinda Rajapaksa Sees Bribery Commission summons as a Government Gift<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The former President also said that Sri Lanka\u2019s national security was now under threat as a result of some of the actions of the new Government.<\/em><\/p>\n

Courtesy:Daily FT<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Mahinda Rajapaksa Will “Ignore” Summons Issued by Bribery Commission and not Appear Before it.’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40769"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40769"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40783,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40769\/revisions\/40783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}