{"id":43771,"date":"2015-05-13T13:19:40","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T19:19:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=43771"},"modified":"2015-05-13T02:54:38","modified_gmt":"2015-05-13T09:54:38","slug":"ex-president-sends-letter-of-demand-to-foreign-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/05\/13\/ex-president-sends-letter-of-demand-to-foreign-minister\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-President sends letter of demand to Foreign Minister"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Adaderana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa has sent a letter of demand to Foreign Minister Managala Samaraweera, seeking Rs 1 billion in damages over an alleged defamatory statement the latter had made.<\/p>\n<p>At a press conference last Thursday (7), Mangala had accused the recently ousted president and his family of having siphoned off funds worth more than $18 billion during Rajapaksa\u2019s terms in power.<\/p>\n<p>We believe that the Rajapaksas hold assets worth over $18 billion (approximate Rs237,933,000,000) in foreign countries,\u201d he said, citing a report received from foreign intelligence services.<\/p>\n<p>However, Rajapaksa denied the allegations in a statement issued the very next day while charging that the government was utilizing the devious means\u201d by which false propaganda against him is being disseminated.<\/p>\n<p>The letter of demand sent to Samaraweera by Attorney-at-Law Athula Priyadarshana de Silva, on behalf of his client Mahinda Rajapaksa, states that the allegations are defamatory and had caused discredit to his client.<\/p>\n<p>It says that while the damages caused to Mr Rajapaksa\u2019s reputation by the comments cannot be estimated his client will be seeking a sum of Rs 1 billion as compensation.<\/p>\n<p>The letter of demand also warns that in the event Samaraweera fails pay the aforementioned sum within 21 days, legal action will be instigated against him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Adaderana Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa has sent a letter of demand to Foreign Minister Managala Samaraweera, seeking Rs 1 billion in damages over an alleged defamatory statement the latter had made. At a press conference last Thursday (7), Mangala had accused the recently ousted president and his family of having siphoned off funds worth more [&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-43771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43771","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=43771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43771\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}