The Sri Lankan cabinet yesterday extended the term of the country’s anti-corruption panel, which is probing serious graft charges against former president Mahinda Rajapakse and his family members.
The cabinet approved the proposal to continue the operations of the Anti-Corruption Committee Secretariat (ACCS) until a new institutional structure is introduced, Minister of Information Gayantha Karunathilake said.
The ACCS was established on a decision made by the cabinet in 2015 to receive and facilitate complaints on serious fraud and corruption.
It was proposed to restructure the anti-corruption institutional structure of the country and to establish a fully-powered Serious Fraud Office which is similar to the Serious Frauds Office
in United Kingdom.
The move to set up ACCS, which was a major election pledge of the President Maithripala Sirisena, was criticised by the opposition backers of
Rajapakse.
The opposition alleged that the secretariat as well as the police’s special Financial Crimes Investigation Unit (FCID) had not been legally constituted.
The Rajapakse family members and its associates have faced allegations of corruption since the advent of Sirisena, who has also set up a special presidential panel to probe
corruption.
The second son of Rajapakse and his younger brother Basil who functioned as the powerful economic development minister was arrested and later released on bail.
The senior Rajapakse has also been quizzed by the presidential probe over unpaid bills at a state television on his election propaganda during the presidential election of January 2015 which he lost to Sirisena.