AG serves indictment on Sajin

Indictment was served yesterday (8) by the Attorney General (AG) before the Colombo High Court against former Monitoring MP of the External Affairs Ministry during the Rajapaksa regime, Sajin de Vass Gunawardena, over money laundering charges.

Gunawardena has been indicted on the charge of laundering money amounting to over Rs 306.26 million, under Section 3 [1] [a] of Money Laundering Act No 05 of 2006 as amended by Act No 40 of 2011.

The Attorney General’s Coordinating Officer has stated that the indictment was served following an investigation conducted by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) on a complaint received on February 2, 2015.

The CID investigation had revealed that Gunawardena had owned a group of companies under the name of ‘COSMOS’ which had 21 companies at the time he handed nominations to contest the general election in 2010.

Though he had resigned as a director of all those companies and transferred his shares to his wife before he became a Member Parliament, evidence had revealed that he was effectively running the full operation of those companies even after he became a parliamentarian.

The CID investigation had revealed that Gunawardena was engaged in suspicious transactions using seven out of the 21 companies.

He had allegedly deposited over Rs 458.73 million in this manner in the accounts of those companies. The CID had found through evidence that Gunawardena had brought monies in cash and asked to deposit the same in an account of a company named by him and the bank details of the accounts maintained in the name of those companies have reflected these deposits.

Gunawardena had also withdrawn cash from those same companies though he had no legal bearing to do so following his resignation as director/owner of those companies.

Investigators have also found that neither Gunawardena nor his wife in their own admission have such a known income comparable to the vast sums of money he had deposited in those companies.