Sri Lankan anti-graft authorities on Friday arrested lawmaker Namal Rajapaksa, the son of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, accusing him of receiving $800,000 linked to a 2013 Airbus deal.<\/p>\n
The Colombo Chief Magistrate Asanga Bodaragama ordered the 40-year-old scion of the once-powerful Rajapaksa family to be held for two weeks pending further investigations.<\/p>\n
He was taken before court by the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC), which arrested him after questioning over the $2.3 billion Airbus transaction.<\/p>\n
The CIABOC told court that Rajapaksa had received $800,000, part of money allegedly paid by the European aircraft manufacturer to Sri Lankan politicians and officials to secure the deal.<\/p>\n
A Sri Lankan businessman had arranged the transfer of cash to Rajapaksa via two Singapore bank accounts, the court was told.<\/p>\n
Rajapaksa’s lawyer Nishantha Dayananda sought bail, but it was denied.<\/p>\n
CIABOC had questioned the former president himself in May over allegations that he, too, had received kickbacks from the aircraft purchase, which was cancelled by a new government in 2016.<\/p>\n
The anti-graft probe centres on claims that the European manufacturer channelled part of the money from the purchase to senior Sri Lankan officials and politicians.<\/p>\n
The Rajapaksa family has denied allegations that they received bribes and dismissed corruption claims against them as politically motivated.<\/p>\n
Former SriLankan Airlines chief executive Kapila Chandrasena told investigators in March that he had handed nearly half a million dollars in kickbacks to the senior Rajapaksa.<\/p>\n
Chandrasena was found dead at a relative’s home in May, shortly before he was due to be rearrested. The cause of death has not been established.<\/p>\n
A joint investigation by US, British and French authorities previously found Airbus had agreed to pay about $16 million in bribes in Sri Lanka, with $1.7 million routed to Chandrasena before the scandal was uncovered.<\/p>\n
The payments were linked to the purchase of 10 Airbus aircraft, which required cabinet approval during Rajapaksa’s presidency from 2005 to 2015.<\/p>\n
According to submissions made in court, Chandrasena initially told investigators he had paid Rajapaksa 60 million rupees ($461,000 at the time) in three instalments in 2013.<\/p>\n
He later retracted the statement, claiming it had been made under pressure.<\/p>\n
SriLankan Airlines has accumulated losses estimated at nearly $2 billion, and repeated attempts to privatise the debt-laden flag carrier have failed.<\/p>\n
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sri Lankan anti-graft authorities on Friday arrested lawmaker Namal Rajapaksa, the son of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, accusing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[90,27591,27518,27590],"class_list":["post-43303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-airbus","tag-airbus","tag-airbus-bribery-scandal","tag-namal-rajapaksa-arrest","tag-sri-lanka-anti-graft-authorities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}