MP Ravi Karunanayake failed on Saturday to appear before the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption for the fourth time, prompting commission officers to visit his residence and the commission to say it will now take legal action against him.
Update, August 31: Karunanayake appeared before the commission on Monday morning and gave a statement.
Karunanayake had been formally notified to appear but did not do so, Ada Derana reported. A team of officers went to his home the same day and left without meeting him. According to the Daily Mirror, they departed after finding the MP was not in Colombo; a close associate said he had already left the city by the time they arrived.
What the investigation is about
The summons relates to the recruitment of five officials to the National Lotteries Board on a contract basis, outside the approved procedure, and their subsequent attachment to Karunanayake’s personal staff, NewsFirst reported. Karunanayake, a former finance minister, held the portfolio under which the board falls.
Neither Ada Derana nor the Daily Mirror identified the investigation.
In the same investigation, former National Lotteries Board chairperson Sharmila Perera was arrested and released on bail on June 30, on two sureties of Rs. 1 million each, after being produced before Colombo Chief Magistrate Asanga S. Bodaragama.
Four summonses since July
Saturday was the fourth occasion on which Karunanayake had been called to give a statement on the matter, according to NewsFirst. He was first summoned on July 16. When summoned again on July 30, he told the commission he could not attend because his daughter’s wedding was scheduled that day. Notified again for Friday, he said his lawyer was unavailable. He did not appear on Saturday either.
Officers then went to his residence on Rajamalwatta Road, Battaramulla, on Saturday morning, NewsFirst reported, and left after finding he was not at home. Ada Derana and the Daily Mirror both placed the residence on Parliament Road; the two roads meet in the same Battaramulla area, but the outlets do not agree on the address.
The Bribery Commission said legal action would be taken against Karunanayake for repeatedly failing to appear.
What remains unreported
No outlet carried a comment from Karunanayake or his lawyers, or said what form the threatened legal action would take. None reported whether the five officials named in the investigation have given statements, or whether Karunanayake has been named a suspect rather than a witness.
Background
Karunanayake sits on parliamentary committees and has been an active questioner of the government on economic policy in the current Parliament. He has appeared in several matters before investigators and the courts in recent years.
In June the Supreme Court addressed the prosecution of the treasury bond case involving former Central Bank governor Arjuna Mahendran and Karunanayake. He has separately been a prominent voice in Parliament on the NDB fraud and Central Bank oversight and on foreign exchange regulation.
LankaNewz has not established a link between the National Lotteries Board investigation and any of those matters, and none of the three outlets connected them.
