{"id":92795,"date":"2019-09-02T14:48:50","date_gmt":"2019-09-02T21:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=92795"},"modified":"2019-09-02T14:48:50","modified_gmt":"2019-09-02T21:48:50","slug":"sri-lanka-to-ask-singapore-to-extradite-ex-central-bank-chief-arjuna-mahendran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/09\/02\/sri-lanka-to-ask-singapore-to-extradite-ex-central-bank-chief-arjuna-mahendran\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka to ask Singapore to extradite ex-central bank chief Arjuna Mahendran"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy The Straits Times<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

COLOMBO (AFP) – Sri Lanka will request the extradition of an ex-central bank chief in relation to a US$74 million (S$103 million) insider trading scam, the attorney-general said Monday (Sept 2), months after Colombo accused Singapore of sheltering him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arjuna Mahendran, a Singapore national of Sri Lankan origin, was accused in 2015 of passing sensitive information to his bond-dealer son-in-law to make millions in undue profits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Documents amounting to 21,000 pages were submitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defence today to be lodged with Singapore,” the attorney-general’s spokeswoman Nishara Jayaratne said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said Mahendran had been indicted in June for causing losses of more than US$11 million to the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mahendran and his son-in-law are accused of manipulating bond auctions in 2015 and 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was named a key suspect in the scam in February last year and fled abroad, failing to appear in court to respond to charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A damning presidential report into the scandal also accused Mahendran of insider trading and recommended the state recover its losses from the pair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep up with the latest in the region with the ST Asian Insider newsletter, delivered to your inbox every weekday<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The country’s central bank has launched a forensic audit to determine whether there was further insider trading during Mahendran’s tenure between January 2015 and June 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mahendran is believed to be in Singapore and in March, Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena accused the island state’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of sheltering him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Former<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But Singapore insisted that Colombo’s request to send back Mahendran was incomplete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka’s chief prosecutor said authorities had by Monday completed the legal requirements to formally lodge an extradition request with Singapore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The allegations deepened acrimony between Sirisena and his coalition partner Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who handpicked Mahendran to head the central bank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy The Straits Times COLOMBO (AFP) – Sri Lanka will request the extradition of an ex-central bank chief in relation to a US$74 million (S$103 million) insider trading scam, the attorney-general said Monday (Sept 2), months after Colombo accused Singapore of sheltering him. Arjuna Mahendran, a Singapore national of Sri Lankan origin, was accused in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law-order"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92795","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=92795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}