An investigation led by the US-based Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), into Jaliya Chitran Wickramasuriya has led to a guilty plea from the former Sri Lankan ambassador.
Wickramasuria attempted to embezzle USD $332,027 during the Sri Lankan government's purchase of a new embassy building in Washington,D.C. Wickramasuriya served as ambassador for the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka to the United States and to Mexico from 2008 to 2014. He pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to a charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The charge carries a statutory maximum of five years in prison and potential financial penalties.
According to court documents, from 2012 through November 2013, Wickramasuriya devised a scheme to defraud the government of Sri Lanka during its 2013 purchase of a new embassy building in Washington, D.C. by inflating the price of the real estate transaction by $332,027 and, at closing, diverting those funds from the government to two companies which had no role in the real estate transaction.
Special agent Ray Villanueva of HSI Washington, D.C. said that Wickramasuriya attempted to use his position of authority to "steal from the people he represented".
“Mr. Wickramasuriya attempted to use his position of authority to defraud his own government and steal from the people he represented,...He did not expect the American authorities to get involved and call on HSI Washington, D.C. to investigate. Today he begins the process of paying for his crimes.”
Wickramasuria who is a close relative of the Rajapaksa's served as the Sri Lankan ambassador to the United States and Mexico from 2008 to 2014. During his tenure and at the height of the armed conflict in 2009, he had accused the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) of distorting the image of Sri Lanka and denied that there was any crisis of press freedom in the country. He later went on to add that "attacks on journalists may have been perpetrated by "terrorists" seeking to embarrass the government". Sri Lanka has consistently been placed low in the World Press Index and in recent days a number of journalists were hospitalised following anti-government protests in which Sri Lankan state forces clashed with demonstrators.
The current President stands accused of corruption and orchestrating the murder of Lasantha Wickrematunge, a prominent critic of the Rajapaksa regime. Wickrematunge had been investigating a deal made towards the end of the armed conflict in 2009, in which the Sri Lankan air force was looking to buy new bomber jets. The planes supplied to the Rajapaksa regime were used to indiscriminately bomb Tamil civilians in the closing stages of the war and a portion of the money used to purchase the planes was redirected to close associates of the Rajapaksa’s.
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Wickramasuria, who now resides in Arlington,Virginia, had previously made a complaint to the Presidential Commission of Inquiry on Political Victimisation in Sri Lanka. The government commission recommended that Wickramasuria be acquitted of all charges filed against him in the Fort Magistrate’s Court, and the state take necessary measures to request the removal of the travel ban imposed on the complainant by the United States. The recommendation from the Sri Lankan government commission is flawed as Wickramasuria has now pleaded guilty to the charges raised against him.
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