The Permanent High Court at Bar has ordered the Attorney General to submit an affidavit before August 9th, if there are any grounds for the request made to issue a warrant to arrest former Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran, the main suspect of the Central Bank bond scam case.
The order was delivered by the Special High Court’s three-judge bench consisting of Judges Sampath Abeykoon, Sampath Wijeratne and Champa Janaki Rajaratne.
When the case was taken up recently, Additional Solicitor General Priyantha Nawana, speaking on behalf of the Attorney General, had requested the court to issue a warrant to produce Mahendran before the court as summons cannot be handed over to him.
Delivering the decision on the additional solicitor general’s request, Special HC Judge Sampath Abeykoon, citing Article 73 of the Criminal Procedure Code, stated that certain requirements need to be fulfilled to issue a warrant for defendant of a case at the earliest opportunity.
Accordingly, the Special HC judge bench ordered the additional solicitor general to submit an affidavit citing the reasons for issuing a warrant to arrest the first defendant of the case.
The judge bench subsequently ordered to issue summons to the 10th defendant of the case, Ajahn Gardiye Punchihewa, who is currently living in Singapore absconding the court. The judge bench called for a report from the prosecution on the summons for Punchihewa to be submitted to the court on the 17th of September.
Defence attorneys have requested the court to issue English and Tamil translations of the indictments filed against Arjun Aloysius, Geoffrey Aloysius, Chitta Ranjan Hulugalle and Muthuraja Surendran citing that their mother tongue is not Sinhalese.
Additional Solicitor General Priyantha Nawana then told the court that he would submit the translations requested by the defence.
Former Central Bank Governor Lakshman Arjuna Mahendran, former Central Bank Deputy Governor Paththinige Samarasiri, Perpetual Treasuries Limited, PTL owner Arjun Joseph Aloysius, CEO Kasun Oshadhi Palisena, chairman Geoffrey Joseph Aloysius, directors Pushyamithra Gunawardena, Chitta Ranjan Hulugalle, Muthuraja Surendran and Ajahn Gardiye Punchihewa were named as the defendants of the bond scam case.
The Attorney General’s Department stated that the charges against the defendants were presented under the Public Property Act for conspiring to commit criminal misappropriation in respect of Treasury Bonds to the face value of Rs 10.058 billion through the Treasury Bond auction on February 27, 2015.
The first and second defendants of the case, Arjuna Mahendran and Paththinige Samarasiri, were charged for criminal breach of trust in respect of Treasury Bonds to the face value of Rs 10.058 billion and thereby causing a loss to the government in a sum of Rs 688,762,100.
