{"id":42493,"date":"2015-03-20T22:50:17","date_gmt":"2015-03-21T04:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=42493"},"modified":"2015-03-20T15:09:06","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T22:09:06","slug":"the-transparency-international-sri-lanka-tisl-concerned-over-panel-composition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/03\/20\/the-transparency-international-sri-lanka-tisl-concerned-over-panel-composition\/","title":{"rendered":"The Transparency International Sri Lanka (TISL) concerned over panel composition"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy The Nation<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><strong>Central Bank investigation<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Transparency International Sri Lanka (TISL) told The Nation that it is concerned about the credibility of an investigation into allegations of wrongdoing with respect to the recent Central Bank bond issue given the political affiliations of the investigators.<\/p>\n<p>All three persons in the panel appointed by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was responsible for the appointment of one of the persons under a cloud in this matter, Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran, are associated with his party.\u00a0 Wickremesinghe in a lengthy representation to Parliament about the issue did not refute allegations that these individuals were \u2018Sirikotha Lawyers\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier, TISL, while expressing the view that \u2018there is a clear case of insider dealing which is a form of corruption, which can only be unearthed with a credible investigation,\u2019 welcomed the appointment of a panel to investigate the matter.\u00a0 TISL Director Shan Wijetunga reiterated this position when speaking to The Nation and was quick to qualify the uncritical approval previously offered by the organization regarding the appointment of an investigating panel.\u00a0 Wijetunga said that he hadn\u2019t known of the political background of the panelists.<\/p>\n<p>TISL in a media statement had earlier \u2018welcomed the decision of appointing two committees to probe into the allegations.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>The committee members appointed on February 27 were Gamini Pitipana, Mahesha Kalugampitiya and Chandimal Mendis. Sri Lanka Freedom party and several other political personnel including the Opposition Leader Nimal Siripala de Silva charged that all three lawyers were in and out of UNP Headquarters \u2018Sirikotha,\u2019 consulting the party leadership and therefore the country could not expect a fair and balanced inquiry from them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy The Nation Central Bank investigation The Transparency International Sri Lanka (TISL) told The Nation that it is concerned about the credibility of an investigation into allegations of wrongdoing with respect to the recent Central Bank bond issue given the political affiliations of the investigators. All three persons in the panel appointed by Prime Minister [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}