Editorial

At long last, and only after intense public agitation has the Government put rhetoric into action by kicking off with the Permanent High Court Trial-at-Bar to try high-end financial frauds in this country.

For too long has white collar crime been given a Nelsonian eye and a free run. The link between crooked businessmen and Government officials and with politicians has continued to ruin this country all along. The euphemism to these rackets is ‘campaign funds’, but a major part of it is ‘lining their pockets’.

In the 1970s, the then Government tried to bring those who violated foreign exchange regulations of the time, to book. A Criminal Justice Commission (CJC) was rushed into law. Provisions of the Evidence Ordinance were discarded to speed up the trials. The legal maxim; “innocent until proven guilty” was turned on its head and one was guilty until proven innocent.

While many praised the Government of that day for pursuing those who violated or circumvented foreign exchange laws, the exercise quickly turned out to take a political twist. Most, if not all those brought before the CJC somehow happened to be financiers of the Opposition UNP.

The then powerful ‘super minister’, Felix R. Dias Bandaranaike was both credited, and then discredited for expediting those trials. He had to pay for what he did when the UNP returned to power and took away his civic rights. That he directly controlled the prosecutions before the CJC was no secret. He would threaten those who were virtually frog-marched before the tribunal saying to the accused; “we will grind you to dust” – unless they toed the line (of the ruling party). Accused were chained to hospital beds and humiliated, and a former Governor General was forced into self-imposed exile after being found guilty. Eventually, what was meant to be a positive exercise, turned out sour.

In 1977, those foreign exchange regulations were relaxed and a liberalised economy followed, bringing in its wake unbridled corruption with foreign currency freely flowing out of the country. To-date, even the European Union has endorsed its policy making body, FATF (Financial Action Task Force) putting Sri Lanka on the ‘grey list’ of countries engaged in money laundering. It has given this country time till March 2019 before it is put on the ‘black list’. The Central Bank Governor says action will be taken “soon’ to avoid this from happening. Good governance seems to be dictated from Europe because the authorities in this country cannot get their act together.

The Permanent High Court which began work on Friday with a relatively high profile case must not risk gaining the reputation the CJC eventually suffered.
While there is a filtering process by which cases could be brought before the Court, i.e. from the Attorney General to the Chief Justice’s eventual imprimatur, the High Court’s credibility is paramount in that it should not be seen as a political witch-hunt of opponents of the Government, but a genuine exercise in punishing those who pocketed public funds while holding office. Those who are likely to be brought before it are quick to profess their innocence by calling it a part of the Government’s agenda to disqualify its political opponents, much like the Special Presidential Commission did in recommending the stripping of former Prime Minister Sirima Bandaranaike’s civic rights.

There’s a need for the Government to show this Court is not limited to ‘white collar rogues’ of the previous Administration, but also its own. A Parliamentary Committee (COPE) and a President-appointed Commission of Inquiry have made adverse strictures on the Central Bank bond scams of 2015 and 2016 and if those adversely mentioned in those reports are not brought to speedy trials before this specially appointed High Court, it would not only be a travesty of justice, but make the Court look a mere inquisition of the Government’s opponents.

The wheels of justice have moved slowly in bringing to justice those who ran riot during the last Government. There have been multiple reasons for this, among which were the lack of expertise and staff in the Police; the money on offer to delay investigations; political ‘you scratch my back, so you can scratch mine later’ deals; and overworked state prosecutors receiving half-baked files from the Police.

So, many past crimes have fallen by the wayside for one or more of these reasons. The yesteryear’s notorious ‘pump and dump’ scandal that hit the Stock Exchange draining the savings at the Employees Provident Fund; the Central Bank’s hedging and Greek bonds fiascos are among the many which have gone into the limbo of forgotten things. The SriLankan Airlines Commission of Inquiry now in session is giving daily doses of what had happened in the loss-making national carrier, but there’s pessimism that apart from the evidence being titillating reading in the newspapers, the findings will go nowhere other than to gather dust in some Presidential cupboard.

The Bribery and Corruption Commission today is toothless. So says its own head. Sitting Ministers refuse to obey the Commission’s summons. So, the Government’s crusade against corruption cannot be a one-sided affair.

Accelerating the cases before a Trial-at-Bar is justifiable considering law’s chronic delays in the regular courts. Laws delays is an endemic situation successive Governments have been unable to resolve due in the main to a select group of senior lawyers having it their way. Spinning out a case comes as second nature to many, and the bulk of cases before each court has its effects on judges.

However, as much as justice delayed is justice denied; justice hurried is justice buried. As much as the incumbent Government may now appear to be in an indecent hurry to put its opponents behind bars with national elections negotiating the bend, the Courts must be insulated from political targets in delivering justice.

Corruption has penetrated every pore of Sri Lankan life. The Establishment has encouraged corruption. That is an established, irrefutable fact. The one-time Registrar of Persons was nabbed for issuing National Identity Cards, no less. Today even ‘genuine’ GCE Advanced Level certificates can be obtained through the back door.

This culture is bolstered by the fact that white collar criminals get away due to political patronage as they are hand-in-glove with the powers-that-be. To reverse this trend is a gigantic task. That journey must begin somewhere, and all long journeys start with the first step. One can only hope the Permanent High Court Trial-at-Bar will be that first step, and be allowed to mete out justice as is expected by the country.