Gerald Peiris
What causes more surprise than all else in the recently published ‘Pandora exposures’, supposedly produced through intensive investigations conducted worldwide by a Washington-based outfit named the ‘International Consortium of Investigative Journalism/ICIJ)’ on shady transactions by those at political and business elite levels is that, among many thousands of such exposures, there is only one from Sri Lanka, attributed to a relatively minor political leader having kinship ties with the two Rajapakshas – Mahinda and his brother Gotabhaya, presently at the apex of the government of Sri Lanka – and her husband, a person who, despite being wealthy, has somehow maintained relatively low profile in Sri Lankan affairs.
The glut of published responses to the ‘Pandora exposures’ from many sources including those at the leadership of mainstream media indicate the likelihood of many among such exposures being based on rumour and gossip and being no more authentic than the stories frequently published in the ‘Yellow Press’ and in innumerable ‘social media’ blogs that are aimed at personal degradation and systemic destabilisation. There is no doubt whatever about that being the scurrilous objectives of this article published by Scilla Alecci – specifically, systemic destabilisation through personal vilification.
A careful reader will find in it nothing other than a confused (and probably, deliberately confusing) mixture of criticisms and indictments on the politics on Sri Lanka during the recent decades, some trivial facts unearthed by ICIJ sleuths on a transfer of a valuable set of paintings from London to a warehouse in Geneva, leaks said to have been obtained by the ICIJ from a Singapore-based firm of ‘financial advisors’ (Is it the same as, or an affiliate of, the firm owned by another Sri Lankan who is believed to have committed the largest ever financial fraud in Sri Lanka?) which are said to indicate concealments and transfers of Thiru Nadesan’s allegedly ill-gotten wealth to several offshore trusts and shell companies with the assistance of corrupt lawyers and other white-collar professionals. There is no information in this part of the harangue on the time-frame and the specificities of such concealments and transfers, except in a statement according the which: “As of 2017 (i.e. 2 years after the ‘regime change’ which, as widely believed here in Sri Lanka, was orchestrated by the US and some of its allies), Rajapaksa and Nadesan’s offshore holdings, which haven’t previously been made public, had a value of about $18 million (was it US$ or Singapore $?). Note here the seemingly innocuous reference to “Rajapaksa and Nadesan holdings.”
This is followed by a wayward detour from the thematic concern of the article as indicated in its title, and thereafter, an effort to place this entire package of crime at the doorstep of the two Rajapaksa presidents. It begins with a colourful photograph of the duo in their election campaign trail of 2019. What Allecci would have the reader believe is that the wealth accumulated by Thuru Nadesan was largely, if not entirely, the product of the wealth acquired through diverse forms of corruption by Mahinda Rajapaksa before and during his 10-year presidential tenure (2005-2015).
In this effort the overarching consideration which Scilla Alecci has missed is that the concerted efforts of unprecedented intensity made by the US-installed puppet government of Sri Lanka in 2015, with the assistance of several international agencies including the Interpol, failed to unearth an iota of evidence in support of the speculation on Mahinda Rajapaksa’s hidden treasures. Surely, the transfer of a large consignment of works of Art by the husband of the deposed president’s niece could not have been kept concealed from Interpol. Likewise, the Channel Island which Nadesan and his wife are alleged to have used as a base for their financial operations is not entirely insulated from investigations conducted by the law-enforcement agencies of Britain.
The “little” which Allecci’s venom has produced is not all that long. It has, in fact, fallen far short of reaching the Presidents whom she has tried to envenom. In the course of her exhibition of ignorance of how the governments of Sri Lanka faced the challenge of secessionism – a war waged in the guise of a ‘liberation struggle’ – in the course of which the self-anointed liberators massacred thousands of Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim civilian inhabitants of Sri Lanka. Ironically, the overall impact of her manic hostility towards the Rajapaksas is an exoneration of the past and present Presidents from the “Rajapaksa clan” from the charges of ruthlessness in vanquishing a cruel enemy of the nation and of fraudulences to amass personal wealth.
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PERTINENT READINGS
Scilla Alecci: “Thiru Nadesan & Nirupama Rajapaksa’s Shady Dealings,” 8 October 2021, https://thuppahis.com/2021/10/08/thiru-nadesan-nirupama-rajapaksas-shady-dealings/#more-55602
DBS Jeyaraj: “Revisiting the Attack on Thirukumar Nadesan in India,” https://www.dailymirror.lk/opinion/Revisiting-the-Attack-on-Thirukumar-Nadesan-in-India/172-222133 …. reproduced at https://thuppahis.com/2021/10/10/when-tamilnadus-ltte-stalwarts-attacked-thiru-nadesan-at-rameswaram-temple-dbs-jeyaraj/#more-55660
C. Jaishankar: “Tamil activists attack Sri Lankan MP’s Husband,” in The Hindu, 2012, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/tamil-activists-attack-sri-lankan-mps-husband/article2789859.ece
