{"id":85380,"date":"2019-02-06T16:35:10","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T23:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=85380"},"modified":"2019-02-06T16:35:10","modified_gmt":"2019-02-06T23:35:10","slug":"mangala-reveals-the-business-mafia-in-customs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/02\/06\/mangala-reveals-the-business-mafia-in-customs\/","title":{"rendered":"Mangala reveals the \u2018business mafia\u2019 in Customs"},"content":{"rendered":"<article class=\"news\">\n<div class=\"news-content\">\n<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy Adaderana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Minister of Finance and Mass Media Mangala Samaraweera says that the Sri Lanka Customs is steered by a business mafia in the country.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking at a press conference held today (06), he stated that there is a possibility that there are some officers in the Customs that help this mafia.<\/p>\n<p>For an example, Sri Lanka loses out on a lot of foreign exchange due to the Pepper and the areca rackets, he pointed out.<\/p>\n<p>Stating that under the agreement with India, this Areca can be exported to India with no limits, the Minister said that these and this Areca are not from Sri Lanka; they are imported from Indonesia and re-exported after making slight changes. He says all these happen illegally.<\/p>\n<p>Samaraweera further says that this racket was identified by the government in 2012 and that high-status persons in the country engaged in this racket. Persons from the government have also joined this racket, he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<div class=\"addvert\"><\/div>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"\u0dbb\u0dda\u0d9c\u0dd4 \u0d85\u0db0\u0dca\u200d\u0dba\u0d9a\u0dca\u0dc2\u0dc0\u0dbb\u0dd2\u0dba \u0d89\u0dc0\u0dad\u0dca \u0d9a\u0dbd \u0dc4\u0dda\u0dad\u0dd4\u0dc0 \u0db8\u0d82\u0d9c\u0dbd \u0dc4\u0dd9\u0dbd\u0dd2\u0d9a\u0dbb\u0dba\u0dd2\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VL_s3S8o_DM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy Adaderana Minister of Finance and Mass Media Mangala Samaraweera says that the Sri Lanka Customs is steered by a business mafia in the country. Speaking at a press conference held today (06), he stated that there is a possibility that there are some officers in the Customs that help this mafia. For an example, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption-and-bribery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85380","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=85380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}