In the light of Udayanga Weeratunga’s lawyer informing the Fort Magistrate on Friday that his client is ready to come and appear before courts, speculations were rife whether he was doing it upon orders of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and if so, is he free to come down on his own volition since he is detained by the UAE authorities.
The previous week, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa reportedly said he could get down Weeratunga, Sri Lanka’s former Ambassador to Russia to appear in the controversial MIG aircraft deal case heard before the Fort Magistrate. There is an arrest warrant as well as an Interpol Red Notice on Udayanga, a relative of the former President.
However, State Counsel Udara Karunatilleke who appeared on behalf of the Attorney General’s Department informed court on Friday, Weeratunga cannot return on his own volition, since he is under federal judicial custody in the UAE. He said, the Government was currently making efforts to get the former Ambassador who is embroiled in a major fraud case extradited, that may also incriminate former Defence Secretary and a number of senior officials in the Airforce, .
The State Counsel said, the UAE authorities have begun court proceedings into the extradition of Weeratunga. Sri Lanka completed the paper work on this weeks ago.
The State Counsel said, the suspect can be brought to Sri Lanka only if he informs court through legal channels, his willingness to return to Sri Lanka. The extradition process can then be terminated and he can be boarded on a Sri Lankan airlines flight bound for Colombo immediately.
On Friday, Fort Magistrate Lanka Jayaratne ordered seven Banks to release details of 40 bank accounts that belong to five top brass of the Air Force. The order ensued a submission by State Counsel that, a sum of US $ 26,800 has been transferred from one of his local bank accounts to a UAE bank account. This transfer had been made subsequent to Central Bank action to freeze his local accounts in view of the investigations, in April 2015. The transfer has been made about six days after the Central Bank restrictions were imposed.
The FCID is also investigating a transfer of Rs.20 million from Ukraine to his mother in law’s bank account.
The Court was also informed through FCID that INTERPOL had issued a ‘Red Warrant’ on Udayanga Weeratunga, naming him as a fugitive wanted by the Sri Lankan authorities.
At the last hearing the AG’s Department submitted a certified copy of an agreement between a Ukrainian Company and Weeratunga, as supplied by the Company and informed that Weeratunga had entered into another agreement in 2008 on servicing aircraft in addition to the questionable deal on MiG fighter jets.
It also transpired in Court that the agreement carried fictitious addresses of all Ukrainian companies involved in the transaction.
According to the Financial Crimes Investigation Division (FCID), which probed the case on a complaint by Iqbal Athas, a veteran Journalist who wrote extensively on the murky deal then, Weeratunga had direct intervention in the transaction in which allegedly millions of state funds were misappropriated. It is claimed, the seven MiG-27 fighter craft acquired for the Air Force in the shady deal were built in the 1980s and purchased at an exorbitant rate. The MiG-27 aircraft deal was also widely exposed in The Sunday Leader, the newspaper founded by assassinated Editor Lasantha Wickrematunge.
The details in The Sunday Leader reports on the deal, correspond closely with what the investigations by the FCID have revealed about the purchase of the Russian aircraft so far. Following the murder of Wickrematunge, former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa filed a defamation suit against the newspaper. The case was finally settled after the newspaper was taken over by an associate of the Rajapaksa regime. The Sunday Leader subsequently retracted all of the news reports.
In August 2017, Weeratunga, through his lawyers attempted to withdraw the Fort Magistrate Court’s arrest warrant on him without success. Weeratunga has claimed the charges were politically motivated. The FCID was established by the Government in 2015 to fast track cases involving vast scale financial crime and corruption alleged to have been committed during the former regime.
A team of lawyers led by Anil Silva PC appeared for the Defence.
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Two ways
J.C.Weliamuna, Attorney At Law and senior anti corruption advocate said, there were only two ways for Sri Lanka’s former Ambassador to Russia Udayanga Weeratunga to return to Sri Lanka. That is, he could either be handed over to Sri Lanka’s law enforcement authorities by the UAE counterparts after the conclusion of the extradition case which is now in progress in a UAE court, or his lawyers have to apply through court for him to be returned to Sri Lanka.
“No President, former or the current for that matter, can get him to return to Sri Lanka under the present circumstances, “ he affirmed.