The Hon. Wijesiri Basnayake
Wijesiri Basnayake spoke during the debate on amendments to the Companies Act, No. 7 of 2007, and expressed regret at what he described as limited Opposition participation. He focused on money laundering and terrorist financing, citing international examples and references to the Panama Papers, Pandora Papers, FATF, IMF estimates, and AUSTRAC definitions. He argued that money laundering threatens financial systems, national security, macroeconomic stability, fiscal revenue, and public trust, and emphasized the need for strong global and domestic anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing measures.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Madam Presiding Member, today we discuss amendments to the Companies Act, No. 7 of 2007. We regret the poor contribution from Opposition Members to this important debate.
¶ 02 Let me clarify: LTTE’s funding largely came from the Tamil diaspora; the 2005 London tube bombings too were financed similarly; likewise, funding for the 9/11 attacks. The Panama Papers and Pandora Papers also come to mind, evoking money laundering and terror financing.
¶ 03 Money laundering dates back millennia—traced to when ancient Chinese merchants hid income to evade taxes. It is the process of giving a legal appearance to illegally acquired wealth. AUSTRAC defines it precisely. It is complex, hard to detect, and destabilizes economies.
¶ 04 It poses severe risks to financial systems, national security and macroeconomic stability, and erodes fiscal revenues, increases crime, and undermines trust in law and financial discipline. The IMF estimates 2–5% of global GDP is laundered. Hence global action: in 1989 the G7 created the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to manage AML and counter-terror finance.
Provenance
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- Hansard, Wednesday, 23 July 2025 ·No. 1754386160089643 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
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Cite as: The Hon. Wijesiri Basnayake. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 23 July 2025. No. 1754386160089643. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/4252