An opposition lawmaker charged that the government and Central Bank were silent over allegations that influential Sri Lankans could be using Seychelles as a transit point to launder money into Swiss bank accounts. Earlier, Seychelles Foreign Ministry refuted such allegations, but did not discount under-the-table deals.
UNP MP Dr. Harsha De Silva, a trained economist, said yesterday (16) that he had called on the government and Central Bank to look into the matter
- “There is information that money is being laundered and authorities need to look into this very seriously,” he said.
Dr. de Silva highlighting the decline of Sri Lankan deposits in Swiss banks to 83 million Swiss Francs from 87 million Swiss Francs previously also comes with the sudden increase of deposits from Seychelles to three billion Swiss Francs from 1.7 billion Swiss Francs.
According to a recent report in Seychelles, the country’s foreign minister Jean-Paul Adam said,
- “We have all the mechanisms in place, meaning if there are any suspicious transactions we have the mechanism as well as cooperation with other countries, to investigate.
- We have the financial intelligence unit (FIU) that has intervened in several cases where money has been transferred here illegally and seized the money and in some cases repatriated the money to foreign governments and companies that were making accusations against the companies.”
However, Adam also admitted that backdoor operations were taking place.
- “It does not mean, I want to be clear, that there aren’t people who are misusing the structures in place, there are always those who try to find ways to go through the back door instead of going through the legal channel,
- but more and more we can see that with the structures we have in place the chances of them being successful is minimal.”
Dr. De Silva questioned the reasons behind Sri Lankan State Banks opening branches in Seychelles (90,000 population) and scheduling regular flights by state budget carrier Mihin Lanka.
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