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The Sri Lanka Army said that nearly 1300 acres of private land in the North and the East are still in the custody of the armed forces. 

However, the Army noted that over 19,000 acres of private land owned by the military has been given back to original owners since January 2015.

The CIA has a recording of a phone call in which Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman gave instructions to "silence Jamal Khashoggi as soon as possible," Turkish news website Hurriyet Daily News said on Thursday. 

It cited a prominent Turkish columnist as saying CIA director Gina Haspel had "signaled" the existence of the recording during a visit to Ankara last month.  

A Turkish official contacted by Reuters said he had no information about such a recording. "There is talk of another recording," Hurriyet newspaper journalist Abdulkadir Selvi wrote in a column, saying the purported call took place between Prince Mohammed and his brother, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington. 

"It is being said that CIA chief Gina Haspel indicated this during her visit to Turkey," he wrote, adding that they had discussed Khashoggi, a critic of the kingdom's de facto ruler.  

"It is being said the crown prince gave orders to 'silence Jamal Khashoggi as soon as possible'," in a call which was monitored by the U.S. agency, he said. 

A day earlier, Turkish news site Haberturk released what it said was quotes from a tape of the Saudi dissident journalist's last moments.

Also Thursday, Federica Mogherini, the European Union's foreign affairs chief, said after talks with Turkey's foreign minister that a transparent and credible investigation into the killing of Khashoggi has not yet been completed.

Khashoggi, a critic of the kingdom's de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. Riyadh has said it was seeking the death penalty for five suspects in the case. 

Speaking at a joint news conference with EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in Ankara, Mogherini said she was completely against any application of the death penalty.  

(Reuters)

Chief of Defence Staff Admiral Ravindra Wijegunaratne, the country’s most senior military officer has been accused of attacking Lt.

Commander Laksiri Geethal Galagamage within the premises of the Naval Headquarters yesterday. Galagamage is a key witness in the Navy abduction for ransom case where a group of naval officers are accused of abducting 11 men for extortion purposes. His statement to the CID also implicated Wijegunaratne who is now accused of providing protection to one of the main accused in the case Lt. Commander Chandana Prasad Hettiarachchi alias Navy Sampath while also aiding and abetting him to flee the country and even supporting him financially during his tenure as Navy Commander. 

Wijegunaratne had confronted Galagamage today as the latter was walking out of the officer's mess, the Colombo Telegraph reports.

According to the media report, Wijegunaratne had arrived with a group of aides after being informed of Galagamage’s presence in the officer’s mess around 2 pm on Sunday. Wijegunaratne in a manner known as common for him had abused Galagamage in obscene language while ordering his aides to haul the officer before him. Perhaps in fear of his life, Galagamage in during the ruckus had attempted to make a run for it with the PSO of Wijegunaratne hot on his heels and a pistol aimed at the key witness. Fearing he would be shot Galagamage had knocked the pistol off the PSO’s hand and fled the Naval HQ going on to lodge a complaint at the Fort Police Station. In the melee, Galagamage’s mobile phone had fallen out of his pocket and was retrieved by Wijegunaratne’s aides. 

Undue Threats to Police

According to the Colombo Telegraph Wijegunaratne had also attempted to coerce OIC of the Fort Police Station to not record Galagamage’s complaint regarding the assault and the theft of his mobile. However, the OIC is said to have visited Naval HQ today for the inquiry only to be blocked by senior Navy officers. However, he has made a lengthy log entry regarding the incident the Colombo Telegraph report said. Sources within the Navy say it appears to have been an attempt to abduct Galagamage. 

Failing to succeed in transferring the investigating officer of the case IP Nishantha Silva through President Maithripala Sirisena last week by falsely accusing Silva of having LTTE links in a desperate bid to prevent his own arrest, pressure appears to be mounting on Admiral Ravindra Wijegunaratne who is scheduled to present himself at the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) tomorrow in order to provide a statement in connection to the case. The Colombo Fort Magistrates Court has ordered the arrest of Wijegunaratne several times. However reporting to courts in one instance on the failure to arrest him, IP Silva of the CID said there are various obstacles in taking the CDS into custody. It is well known that he is being protected by President Sirisena who even allowed him to travel to Mexico in order to attend Mexico’s National Day celebrations representing Sri Lanka when Wijegunaratne was required to present himself at the CID to provide a statement on a previous occasion. 

However, Magistrate Ranga Dissanayake has provided the CID time till November 28 to present Wijegunaratne before the courts to face allegations of aiding and abetting a wanted suspect to avoid law enforcement and flee the country. It is prior to the court date that the CID has served the summons on the CDS who has now gone on to assault the key witness against him. 

Strong evidence against Wijegunaratne 

According to the CID, it had sent two messages to the administrative branch of Navy HQ for the attention of Wijegunaratne who was at the time Commander, on March 1 and March 28, 2017. The messages had requested the Navy to produce Lt. Commander Hettiarachchi alias Navy Sampath to the CID on March 2 and 31, respectively. However, responding to the CID the Navy had claimed it was not aware of Hettiarachchi’s whereabouts. But evidence and witness statements later revealed that Hettiarachchi was being harboured by the Navy with the knowledge of the Commander at the Naval Headquarters in Colombo during the time.

Making a statement to the CID, Hettiarachchi’s wife had claimed she visited her husband thrice at the Navy HQ between March 3 - 31, 2017 while the Navy continued to claim it had no knowledge of Hettiarachchi’s location. 

Galagamage’s statement further supported this. In his statement to law enforcement he claimed, Hettiarachchi was housed in the adjacent room to his, in the officers’ mess at the time. He also recalled that at one time encountering both Wijegunaratne and Hettiarachchi in the lift he was able to listen in on a damning conversation between the two. 

“Seeing Hettiarachchi, Navy Commander Wijegunaratne inquired as to where he was heading off to, Hettiarachchi said he was visiting the Light House to meet his wife. Wijegunaratne then said he will not be held responsible if the Police nab Hettiarachchi if he jaunts about” Galagamage had told the CID proving Wijegunaratne was fully aware that Hettiarachchi was being harboured within the HQ. CID was able to further establish this by obtaining receipts for food and drink dispensed by the officer's mess to Hettiarachchi at the time. 

As a result, the CID has accused the CDS of allegedly shielding Navy Sampath from investigators while also misleading them by claiming that the Navy did not know his whereabouts.
 
Financial help for the main suspect
 
But the CID has also accused Wijegunaratne of providing Hettiarachchi with financial help. According to Laksiri’s statement sometime after the incident in the lift, Hettiarachchi was seen packing a bag. Showing him a small bag full of money Hettiarachchi had claimed it came from the Commander for expenses. He had vanished from the Navy HQ the next day. The CID during a previous court sitting had reported that the Sri Lanka Navy had transferred half a million rupees to Hettiarachchi from a special account maintained at the Bank of Ceylon.
 
As the CID closes in on him with the court standing steadfast yesterday's incident has merely landed Wijegunaratne in further hot water and has revealed his sheer desperation to avoid assured jail time. 

The German Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Joern Rohde, in twitter message today (23), revealed that many western diplomats had met with UPFA members for discussions.

"Why this unfair criticism at Canadian HC and members of the diplomatic Community? Last Tuesday around a dozen envoys including Canadian HC and myself met with 4 leading UFPA MPs/Ministers on their request. We respected their request for confidentiality,” the German envoy said.

This was in response to parliamentarian Namal Rajapaksa's tweet with regard to the comments he made about western diplomats meeting with the UNP to discuss the current constitutional crisis.

The Canadian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, David McKinnon, shot back at the young parliamentarian yesterday on twitter over a comment he made on the United National Party (UNP) and Tamil National Alliance (TNA) meeting diplomats in Colombo to discuss the political crisis.

Namal Rajapaksa went on the back foot by stating that he was not criticizing the diplomatic community. 

The Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs under the 'purported' minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, recently announced a package of tax exemptions for the agriculture sector. However, the announced measures have little or no real impact on the agro sector as most small-scale farmers do not fall into the bracket of income tax payers. 

Data over the last few years showed that revenue collected from all agriculture-based income taxes accounted for approximately 0.03% of total government tax revenue – this is a negligible figure and suggests that the reductions of these taxes will not have a material impact on the agriculture sector and the productivity thereof.

Key issues in the agricultural sector

However, the real requirements with regard to the agricultural sector in Sri Lanka are access to affordable finance, good quality irrigation facilities, state of the art storage and warehousing facilities, and access to foreign/domestic markets.

Through former Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera’s ambitious ‘Enterprise Sri Lanka’ programme, the ousted government initiated several loans schemes including ‘Ran Aswenna’ (subsidised interest rate of 6.8%) and ‘Govi Navoda’ (subsidised interest rate of 3.4%), that covered the entire agriculture value chain. Before the unconstitutional coup that took place on  October 26, over LKR 9 billion was disbursed under the Ran Aswenna credit scheme that was geared to provide financial assistance for farmers, farmer organizations and agro-processing establishments for upgrading the sector through infusion of productivity enhancing technologies and practices. It also opened avenues for small farmers to transform their businesses from subsistent level to commercial level.

Similarly, under the Govi Navoda loan scheme, over LKR 8 billion was disbursed before the illegal takeover of the government. This was a special loan scheme introduced to improve the mechanization of agriculture. This concessionary loan scheme provided financial assistance for farmers and farmer cooperatives in order to encourage them to mechanize their agriculture activities.
 
Furthermore, through the ‘Gampereliya’ rapid rural infrastructure development programme, the former government initiated the rehabilitation of small irrigation tanks around the country that had been neglected for decades, that left farmers vulnerable to the droughts of the last two years.

They also initiated several major state of the art warehousing projects in Polonnaruwa, Ratnapura, and Killinochchi through the 2018 budget, which has helped stabilise farmer incomes. Through the ‘Agriculture Modernisation Programme’, the former government initiated numerous schemes to connect small scale farmers with larger domestic and global value chains. At a recently held press conference, former finance minister Samaraweera said that all of these programmes were targeted for expansion through the 2019 budget.  
 
The proposed tax breaks of the ‘purported’ government will not address any of these critical issues in agriculture. However, it will benefit the large plantation companies and commercial agricultural players, who could afford to pay taxes. Therefore, in effect, the agriculture relief package provides a tax break for corporates but provides no benefit to the small-scale farmers. These tax breaks are lazy, populist measures that do not address the real underlying issues of the agriculture sector.  
 
The tax exemptions for agriculture will however, raise other questions. What about support for the other small-scale industries? What about small and medium scale businesses engaged in carpentry, retail, manufacturing, construction, and fisheries sectors? Do they not deserve tax relief? Why just agriculture? Perhaps, since it is a sector with a large number of individuals of which only a very few would actually benefit from the proposed tax breaks. The tax package also includes measures to reduce taxes for agricultural processing which will benefit large scale, highly profitable rice millers.  

The Big Four

It also noteworthy that the four biggest rice millers in the country are all affiliated to the Maithri-Mahinda illegal government.

Dudley Sirisena, the president’s younger brother, was allegedly a key figure that worked behind the scenes to broker the partnership between Sirisena and Rajapaksa. Incidentally, he is also the owner ‘Araliya’ rice mills.

Polonnaruwa district parliamentarian, Siripala Gamplath, from the UPFA, is the owner of the famous ‘Nipuna’ rice mills.

L. Mithrapala, who is the Polonnaruwa district organiser for the UPFA, is also the owner of the ‘New Rathna’ rice mills.

Matale district parliamentarian from the UPFA, Lakshman Wasantha Perera, is the owner of the ‘Lak Sahal’ rice mills.
 
The income tax policy of the former government was based on levels of profit, and not based on favouring certain sectors. Accordingly, whether you were in agriculture or in IT, if you made a profit over a certain level, you were liable to pay a tax of 14% or 28%. At the same time, if you did not make a profit, the company wasn't required to pay taxes regardless of which sector it was under.  

It could be argued that the income tax policy of the former government was based on fairness and equity, whilst also recognising the need for profitable companies to contribute to government revenue in order to fund public services such as free education, health, and infrastructure.

However, as per what is proposed by the 'purported' Minister of Finance Mahinda Rajapaksa, only large-scale companies and profitable multinationals engaged in the agriculture sector would benefit by paying reduced taxes. Companies like the ones mentioned above would qualify to pay taxes under the 28% tax bracket.

Therefore, it is highly questionable as to what the ‘purported’ government intends to achieve by introducing such haphazard policies aimed at reducing the tax liabilities of only a handful of companies that have direct affiliations to the ruling coalition.

Attorney General Jayantha Jayasuriya has withdrawn the petition submitted to the Court of Appeal against Bodu Bala Sena's Secretary, Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara thero, today (23).

The Attorney General's petition challenged the decision taken by the High Court, which acquitted Gnanasara thero along with 12 other suspects, for forcibly entering a church (Malabe Calvary Christian Center) and causing damage to its property in 2008.

Two Chinese companies have been awarded contracts to improve facilities at the Jaya Container Terminal of the Colombo port. 

Minister of Ports and Shipping Mahinda Samarasinghe submitted a proposal to the cabinet to award the contract to the China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd., to expand the deep water anchorage capacity at the terminal.

Meanwhile, Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries, which is another Chinese company, was awarded the contract to purchase three cranes to be used at the Jaya Container Terminal.

Minister Samarasinghe said that the cabinet approved a proposal to award the contract of purchasing three new cranes using the funds of the Sri Lanka Ports Authority, valued at LKR 25.7 million on the recommendation of cabinet appointed procurement committee.

The Sri Lankan rupee hit a record low of 180.6606 against the US Dollar today. 

The rupee fell to an all-time low at 179.50 on the dollar, compared with Wednesday’s close at 178.70/179.20. 

Moody’s had downgraded Sri Lanka on Tuesday for the first time since it started rating the country in 2010, blaming the political crisis for aggravating already problematic finances.

The CID has summoned the country’s topmost ranking military official CDS Admiral Ravindra Wijegunaratne to provide a statement in connection to the abduction of 11 youth between 2008 - 2009 by a group of Navy officers. The CID has accused the CDS of helping one of the main accused in the case Lt. Com Chandana Prasad Hettiarachchi alias Navy Sampath to abscond and leave the country. According to witness statements the CDS had provided Navy Sampath with the necessary monetary funds to escape. 

While Wijegunaratne was previously called before the CID, however, he avoided the summons by travelling abroad. Sources say President Maithripala Sirisena has been protecting the CDS and preventing his arrest. The President even attempted to transfer investigating officer of the case IP Nishantha Silva last week. However, it was later overturned following due to pressure from media, civil society and members of the public. The Navy group led by several Naval officers had abducted 11 men in 2008 - 2009 as part of an extortion racket.

The appointment of members to the selection committee was passed with 121 in-favor and none against in the 225 member parliament today. This is the third time the Maithri-Mahinda faction suffered defeat in Parliament. 

The illegal government had submitted seven names to the committee but speaker Karu Jayasurya agreed for five names in the 12 member committee as the meeting of party leaders held on Friday morning failed to reach a consensus on the issue. 

Speaker Jayasuriya named Lakshman Kiriella, Rauf Hakeem, Rishard Bathiudeen, Mano Ganeshan and Patali Champika Ranawaka (UNF) and Mavai Senathiraja (ITAK) and Vijtha Herath (JVP) as members.

Dinesh Gunewardene, Nimal Siripala De Silva, S B Dissanyake, Mahinda Samarasinghe, Wimal Weerawansa were named from the UPFA.

Speaker Karu Jayasuriya will chair the committee as per standing orders.

All 122 members of parliament that supported the no-confidence motions against 'purported' prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa have filed a Writ of Quo Warranto in the Court of Appeal challenging the 'purported' government’s illegal continuation in office. 

The MPs have requested the Court of Appeal to issue a writ declaring that Mahinda Rajapaksa and the purported Ministers and Deputy Ministers have no authority to hold government offices following two successful no-confidence motions in Parliament. 

In November last year, the Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeal judgment dated May 3, 2017 and its order in the nature of a Writ of Quo Warranto declaring that MP Geetha Kumarasinghe is disqualified to be a Member of Parliament and not entitled to hold office as an MP as she held dual citizenship.

Nalaka Godahewa, a controversial figure involved with various alleged malfeasance has been appointed as the chairman of Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation.

Nalaka Godahewa was the former chairman at the SEC Sri Lanka. His appointment to the SEC at the time was considered controversial and heavily criticized then because of his association with companies whose stock prices made sudden and steep gains.

He was notoriously associated with the Krishh transaction where allegations were leveled that large amounts of monies were purportedly requested by members of the ruling Rajapaksa regime.

Godahewa has worked two stints at SLIC previously, once when SLIC was controlled by the Distilleries Group headed by businessman Harry Jayawardhena at the end of which period, his contract was not renewed.

He emerged again as the Managing Director at SLIC under the Rajapaksa regime and resigned a few months before the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka returned the ownership of SLIC to the treasury, holding that the privatization was flawed.

Godahewa was later appointed to head the SEC at the height of the controversial Pump and Dump scandal.

He is also associated with the sale of 29% of shares at Lanka Hospitals PLC by the Distilleries Group after SLIC was returned to the full ownership of the treasury.

After the fall of the Rajapaksa administration in 2015, Investigations revealed that Godahewa was involved in the misuse of SEC funds, where it transpired that funds approved by the SEC board for the purpose of promoting share ownership amongst youth was diverted to an event promoted by MP Namal Rajapaksa.

This resulted in Godahewa facing charges, being remanded and he is currently out on bail, pending litigation.

Godahewa’s appointment bears striking similarities to the appointment of Kapila Chandrasena to SriLankan Airlines which was brought to the attention of the appointing authorities who promptly withdrew the appointment in the face of public dismay.

(NewsFirst)