Sri Lanka: Rajapaksa Son’s Waterloo

Last week’s arrest of the Rajapaksa progeny along with CSN top executives peels the lid off one of the more murky financial foul plays of the former first family:

( February 7, 2016, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) A week ago, it was curtain fall of sorts for Lieutenant Yoshitha Rajapaksa, the second son of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, when the Kaduwela Magistrate remanded him till February 11, in connection with serious financial fraud.

Though there had been many allegations floated about, until the Court decision, everything appeared to be mere hearsay with no evidence to demonstrate actual complicity of any Rajapaksa family member.

In Yoshtha’s case, the links are multiple and complex, and finally, he was remanded for allegedly violating the Prevention of Money Laundering Act of 2006.

Lieutenant Yoshitha Rajapaksa

The arrest brought to an end, much speculation about the former first family’s alleged involvement in large-scale corruption and other malpractices –most of which provided a political springboard for the incumbency and the basis for a series of investigations by the Financial Corruption Investigations Division (FCID). It also resulted in strong protests and counter arguments about a son having to pay the price for being Mahinda Rajapaksa’s son.

Undaunted, the young wisecracking VIP who does not consume prison food and has many political visitors turning up to check on him with such regularity that the prison authorities had to limit his visitors to three family members, has said the prison was a better place than the Navy Camp. His father, the war-winning former president, whose tenure was deeply tainted by allegations of corruption called the arrest “the ultimate revenge of President Sirisena.”

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