{"id":77255,"date":"2018-05-10T15:21:08","date_gmt":"2018-05-10T22:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=77255"},"modified":"2018-05-10T15:21:08","modified_gmt":"2018-05-10T22:21:08","slug":"sri-lanka-creates-special-courts-for-rajapakse-era-graft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/05\/10\/sri-lanka-creates-special-courts-for-rajapakse-era-graft\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka creates special courts for Rajapakse-era graft"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy NewsIn.Asia<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Colombo, May 10 (AFP) \u2013 Sri Lanka\u2019s parliament Wednesday voted to set up special courts to try multi-billion dollar graft cases under former president Mahinda Rajapakse.<\/p>\n<p>The move aims to accelerate several high-profile cases following criticism over the slow pace of justice since President Maithripala Sirisena came to power in 2015 promising to stamp out corruption.<\/p>\n<p>Parliament voted 119-52 to create high courts to take up white collar crimes and reduce the backlog of cases.<\/p>\n<p>The new courts will reduce pressure on the criminal justice system and help speed up hearings,\u201d Justice Minister Thalatha Atukorale said.<\/p>\n<p>The choice of which cases will be taken up by the new courts will be made by the chief justice to ensure that no political pressure is involved, she added.<\/p>\n<p>Sirisena came to power three years ago pledging to punish members of the former administration accused of stealing vast sums during Rajapakse\u2019s decade in power.<\/p>\n<p>Rajapakse loyalists in the 225-member parliament voted against the bill.<\/p>\n<p>Sirisena has said up to half of all public procurement contracts under the Rajapakse administration were corrupt, and his government has renegotiated several multi-billion dollar projects.<\/p>\n<p>Rajapakse\u2019s chief aide Lalith Weeratunga has already been convicted of misappropriating $4 million and sentenced to three years in prison.<\/p>\n<p>Two of the former president\u2019s three sons have been charged with money-laundering and other relatives face corruption allegations.<\/p>\n<p>Rajapakse, who is not under investigation, denies any wrongdoing and accuses his successor of a witch hunt<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy NewsIn.Asia Colombo, May 10 (AFP) \u2013 Sri Lanka\u2019s parliament Wednesday voted to set up special courts to try multi-billion dollar graft cases under former president Mahinda Rajapakse. The move aims to accelerate several high-profile cases following criticism over the slow pace of justice since President Maithripala Sirisena came to power in 2015 promising to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77255","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=77255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}