Now onus on Attorney General to act on bond probe: Lanka PM

Sri Lanka's Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe today said now it was up to the Attorney General to take the appropriate action on the Presidential Bond Commission report on alleged irregularities in the sale of two treasury bonds.
The Commission, appointed by Sirisena to probe the alleged scam, had held the former governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka Arjuna Mahendran guilty of leaking sensitive market information.
Making public the findings of the Commission's report in a televised speech yesterday, the President said that the panel has also recommended the prosecution of the country's former finance minister Ravi Karunanayake on bribery charges.

Welcoming the report, the Prime Minister's Office said that in December 2016, Wickremesinghe had requested the Attorney General to make recommendations against the guilty officials on the disputed bond issues.
In what was dubbed by the Opposition as the "biggest financial scam in Sri Lanka's history", the commission probed a series of rigged bond auctions, in February 2015 and March 2016, conducted by the central bank under Mahendran in which his son-in-law's company Perpetual Treasuries allegedly made thumping profits by buying securities at low prices.
"Now the President, in January 2018, has also entrusted the Attorney General to take legal action. It was now up to the Attorney General to take appropriate action," the statement said.

The Commission had recommended legal action against Mahendran and his son-in-law Arjun Aloysius for the scam, but did not made any comment on the conduct of Wickremesinghe, whose resignation was demanded by the Opposition for appointing Mahendran, a Singapore national as the chief of the Bank.
The alleged scandal rocked the current government of national unity.