The Hon. Arjuna Sujeewa Senasinghe, Attorney-at-Law

¶ 01 Four who were working were sent off. Then how can an inquiry be conducted while a Deputy Minister remains? If those four obstruct an inquiry, why are the Deputy Minister, the Minister, and the Secretary still in office? How will you investigate? Minister Anil alleges various persons are suspects. If suspicion alone is enough, then everyone here is suspect. The Deputy Minister, despite being under suspicion, still sits in the chair. With a Deputy Minister remaining, can the Police or CID carry out an inquiry?

¶ 02 What did he say when asked? He said he had informed. Informed where? Minister Nalinda Jayatissa will recall: when a journalist asked him, he asked, “Are you referring to the fraud mentioned by Minister Maithri Gunaratne?” Where was this informed? Was Parliament informed? You hid it for so long and told no one. You hid the fraud.

¶ 03 You should have informed Parliament and explained properly. Minister Nalinda Jayatissa, whom we respect, himself asked whether this was what Maithri Gunaratne had raised. If Maithri Gunaratne knew, didn’t you also know this? USD 2.5 million is not peanuts.

¶ 04 Also, LKR 13.5 billion was transferred from NDB Bank—where is that? You talk of frauds during the Rajapaksa period. The entire JVP lot were with the Rajapaksas then. They said they even knew cheque numbers of the stolen funds. The Minister of Justice’s uncle’s house was found on that side. Do not pretend to be pure—investigate the frauds. Now you talk about an innocent person. For days, you said nothing about this. I say that between the NDB incident with LKR 13.5 billion and this fraud with nearly one billion rupees, the country has lost huge sums.

¶ 05 Politically, say what you will, but both of you know this: Sri Lanka’s banks must be audited. You keep dragging it without auditing. If audited, Sri Lanka would face issues with global listings. However, it has now been demanded to audit the banking sector quickly because of these frauds. In the last one and a half years all this happened. You talk of losses in billions. The coal fraud alone caused losses exceeding hundreds of billions. Because of that fraud, the true price of a litre of fuel today is about Rs. 700. You say “we bear the extra cost”—“we” means taxpayers’ money, the taxes squeezed out by Ranil Wickremesinghe.