24 May 2022
Gajalakshmi Paramasivam
UKRAINE & MIG DEAL
The message from outgoing PM Scott Morison,
during his campaign was that it was about us the People. I identify with it. We discuss politics in various groups – at
different depths. We win or lose arguments as if they were our elections to
lead the respective groups. The winner often administers the group. In more
democratic groups – the winner educates the group as per her/his own findings.
The
Ultimate reality is identified with – by
one who takes the truth from each group and goes to the next level where
that truth leads. In the meantime one is not allowed to take any benefits or
accept any costs along that pathway. They both deviate us from finding the
truth at that time in that group.
A
social media group therefore should not take pleasures – including status – if
it is to naturally merge with the wider community that it is part of. Likewise,
official media with politics.
The Washington
post’s report ‘Inside the collapse of the Rajapaksa dynasty in Sri
Lanka ; How two powerful brothers fell out and took their country down with them
– highlights some such weaknesses highlighting through the mind of the cousin Udayanga
Weeratunga and the ‘timing’
commonness with Ukraine:
1.
Washington Post: “You cannot win [in politics] if you’re
not from an established family,” said Razeen Sally, a professor at the National
University of Singapore. “So the system is left to established insiders who can
pillage the state.”
The
second of nine children, Mahinda was charismatic, loved crowds and stuck close
to his younger brother, Basil, who is considered the family’s political
strategist.
Their
middle brother, Gotabaya, was always different: aloof, politically
inexperienced, a teetotaler and vegetarian who spent 21 years in the military. “He
would visit the ancestral home only during New Year,” recalled Weeratunga,
their cousin who is close to Mahinda.
1.1 Udayanga Weeratunga’s role in
public life was revealed through his involvement in the MIG deal
In two articles
in August 2007, (Journalist Iqbal)Athas reported on the purchase of
second-hand MiG-27 jet
fighters from Ukraine,
suggesting that the deal had been corrupt. The first, on 12 August, was titled
"MiGs loaded with millions in mega frauds; The Sunday Times
investigation reveals shocking double-deals and wheeler-dealings; While Lanka
remains hush-hush, Ukraine Govt. orders full probe". Athas
traced the purchase to "Belimissa Holdings", a company
ostensibly based in the UK but not listed in the UK Company Register
After the
report, his security was withdrawn by the government, leading Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
and the Committee to Protect Journalists to issue statements of concern for his
safety. A protest was held outside Athas' house on 27 August by government
supporters, which RSF described as a "parody of a demonstration, clearly
organised by the authorities and putting Athas in serious
danger." The Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association criticised it
as "systematic intimidation". W. G. Gunaratne, a journalist who
translated Athas's articles into Sinhala for
the newspaper Lankadeepa,
also reportedly received a death threat from an Air Force officer.
Indicator based Discovery: The above
highlights the power of the connection of local (Sinhala) minds to English
media. Until that grassroots level translation happens – the People’s mind
would continue to depend on their seniors who would ‘give’ benefits.
2. The
anatomy of the MiG deal - https://www.sundayobserver.lk/2019/01/06/news-features/anatomy-mig-deal - 06 January 2019
The Sunday Observer: By January 2006, the Air Force Commander,
Air Vice Marshal Donald Perera had placed on record that the air force should
give up on MiG-27 aircraft and modernise its fleet by considering options
available from several other countries, including the United States and Israel.
The following month, however, the Commander was to make a u-turn, following a
sudden meeting summoned by Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
That meeting, held at the Defence
Ministry on February 6, 2006, was for Rajapaksa’s cousin, Udayanga Weeratunga, and his
business associate Dmytro Peregudov of Ukraine, to pitch MiG-27 aircraft to the air
force once again. The Air Force Commander listened intently, but shared his
concerns borne from bad experiences in dealing with DS Alliance, who had
supplied the earlier aircraft. Weeratunga gave an
assurance that DS
Alliance would be left out of the equation, after which the Air Force Commander was
urged to reverse his previous stance and accept a proposal from Peregudov and Weeratunga.
When Perera took the Peregudov-Weeratunga
proposal to air force officers the following day, he was immediately advised of
a procedural issue.
Since the proposal was ‘unsolicited’, the air force was stymied from accepting
it without following the standard government procurement procedure. Under
pressure, Donald Perera resolved the impasse by issuing a comical letter to
Peregudov, dated 7 February 2006, requesting to receive the proposal that he
had been handed the previous day in the Defence Secretary’s office. Thereafter,
a ‘tender process’ was sparked off, a committee was appointed to evaluate the
proposal to purchase the MiG aircraft pitched by Peregudov, without any call for competing bids from
competitors.
Indeed, the air force used an expedited procurement procedure that bypassed the
need to call for
competing bids on the basis that the proposal was ‘government-to-government’ originating
directly from a Ukraine state-owned entity, Ukrinmash.
The
above report questions the validity of the statements to Washington Post by Mr
Weeratunga. It also indicates the common reason why in terms of problems of Sri
Lankans surfaced during this time when Ukrainians are experiencing attacks from
Russian armed forces.
2. The anatomy of the MiG deal - https://www.sundayobserver.lk/2019/01/06/news-features/anatomy-mig-deal - 06 January 2019
The Sunday Observer: In December 2006 it was exposed by the Sunday Times that the MiG aircraft
purchased through ‘Bellimissa Holdings’ by the Rajapaksa regime had cost
US $2.4 million per plane, or double the price paid six years earlier per
aircraft under the Kumaratunga regime.
In July 2007, Lasantha Wickrematunge
and The Sunday Leader blew the deal wide open, by exposing that there
had never been any ‘Bellimissa Holdings Limited’ registered in the United
Kingdom, and that the address and fax number provided to the air force were ghost
forwarding services.
In the weeks following Wickrematunge’s
exposè, the Defence Ministry, and Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa in particular,
rose to defend the MiG deal, asserting that the aircraft they had purchased had
a much longer lifespan than those acquired in 2000, and denying the existence
of a third-party in the transaction. Rajapaksa even went so far as to say he had no knowledge or involvement with the deal. Then, in
September 2007, Wickrematunge and The Sunday Leader struck again and filled in
the gaps, exposing February 6, 2006 meeting chaired by Rajapaksa, at which the
MiG deal began, and detailing the involvement in the deal of Udayanga
Weeratunga, who by then had been appointed President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s
Ambassador to Russia and the Ukraine. The Defence Secretary then threatened to
sue Wickrematunge in the District Court of Mount Lavinia, demanding Rs. 1
billion in damages. Wickrematunge responded by threatening
to countersue the Defence Secretary for Rs. 2 billion in damages. The editor’s
lawyer explained the higher damages he would seek from Rajapaksa as follows: “My client’s estimate of damages will be
greater than that of your client since my client has always remained in this
country and worked for its betterment and your client has voluntarily left this
country and migrated to the United States of America and taking citizenship in
that country by swearing allegiance to that country.” Eventually, Rajapaksa did
file defamation action against The Sunday Leader.
Lasantha Wickrematunga was murdered shortly
before the case was to come up for trial, and never had his day in court. Ownership of The Sunday
Leader changed hands, and the new owners settled the defamation suit with
Rajapaksa by withdrawing their articles and tendering an unconditional apology.
Since the FCID began investigating the deal in 2015, it has come to light that
the infamous ‘Bellimissa Holdings’ was a shell company in the British Virgin Islands that was all along owned by ‘T.S. Lee’ and the DS Alliance cabal.
Their bank account was traced by FCID to
Singapore, to the same bank as DS Alliance. A parallel Ukrainian investigation into the
MiG deal has revealed that the Ukrainian government never was a party to the
MiG deal.
The aircraft that arrived in Sri Lanka
in 2007, it turns out, were sold by Ukraine to DS Alliance for less than US $1 million each, with
the middle men more than doubling the price they charged the Sri Lanka Air
Force and pocketing the remaining US $1.4 million per aircraft. Several air force officers interviewed
by the FCID have made it clear that despite breathless denials and a defamation
settlement, there would have been no MiG deal without Gotabaya Rajapaksa and
Udayanga Weeratunga. Based on the evidence collected so far from several jurisdictions
and with the assistance of Interpol and the CID, the FCID has secured the
arrest of Udayanga Weeratunga, who was in hiding outside Dubai.
The former Ambassador now awaits
extradition to his home country. As the FCID net grows wider and wider, it is
only a matter of time before the remaining culprits of the MiG deal are brought
to book, and the public finds out who profited from the MiG deal.
For now, thanks to the tireless efforts
of the FCID, everything that The Sunday Leader alleged about the MiG deal has been proven factually
correct, and Lasantha Wickrematunge has been posthumously vindicated.
Indicator based
Discovery: The media has reported but given that it was not taken to
grassroots level before the Presidential and Parliamentary elections – the
karmic network caused the economic problems at voter level. Is media not
responsible?
As per Wikipedia
report ‘Weeratunge was arrested in Dubai on 4
February 2018, by international police based on a request made by Sri Lankan
Authorities
The Washington
Post’s report loses credibility due to suppression of vital information about
their informant.
3. Wikipedia
report – Common Law Immunity
Wikipedia
: In April 2019,
Ahimsa Wickrematunge, the daughter of Lasantha
Wickrematunge,
filed a lawsuit against Rajapaksa in the state of California. Rajapaksa, while
on vacation in the United States, was served notice of two civil
lawsuits. In October
2019, the court in California rejected the case based on lack of
jurisdiction to consider Wickrematunge's claims, because, in the Court's
view, Rajapaksa is entitled to common law foreign official immunity for
the alleged acts of torture, extrajudicial
killing, and
crimes against humanity.
“MANTAR V. YOUSUF, the U.S.
Supreme Court unanimously rejected the argument that the Foreign Sovereign
Immunities Act (FSIA) should be read to encompass all suits brought against
individual foreign officials for acts performed in an official capacity. 1 The
Court held that when plaintiffs sue a current or former foreign official “in
his personal capacity and seek damages from his own pockets,” the suit “is not
a claim against a foreign state as the Act defines that term.” 2 Instead, an
individual defendant’s immunity “is properly governed by the common law.” - https://repository.uchastings.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2089&context=faculty_scholarship
Indicator based
Discovery: Ahimsa may have been dismissed by the Court of law at the level she
could afford. But just minded People would find it difficult to reconcile this
with the following:
[On 14 February 2020, The United States State
Department imposed sanctions in the form of
a travel ban preventing
General Silva and his family from entering the United States having found him
accountable through command responsibility for
what it stated as “gross violations of human rights, namely extrajudicial
killings, by the 58th division of the Sri Lanka army" at
the final stages of the war against the LTTE in 2009, when
up to 70,000 Tamil civilians
were killed. The Government of Sri Lanka has strongly opposed the measure.]
If a US citizen is protected by Common law, but not a
Sri Lankan to enter the USA – then that law cannot be Common Global Law.
4. Political
takeover by the American Government?
Wikipedia: In May 2019 former Ambassador to Sri Lanka and Assistant Secretary
of State for South and Central Asia in the Obama Administration, Robert
O. Blake Jr.,
praised Rajapaksa on the management of the intelligence services during and
post war. On 26 April 2019 he confirmed that he will
be contesting the presidential election, following the deadly Easter Sunday bombings.
On 11 August
2019, Sri
Lanka Podujana Peramuna led by former president Mahinda Rajapaksa announced that Rajapaksa will be
their candidate for the 2019 Presidential election.
Citizenship row
During
the campaign, several political parties including then ruling United
National Party accused him of having American citizenship and
claimed that he stayed and lived in America for more than ten years and
revealed that he was not a Sri Lankan citizen. Gotabaya was also pressured to
not to contest at the Presidential elections because of holding dual
citizenship. Further he was alleged to have carried a duplicate Sri Lankan passport
with him and court cases were pending against him over the citizenship issue
and the issue regarding his passport. Former President and the elder brother of
Gotabaya, Mahinda Rajapaksa was also accused of using his
executive powers to grant his brother, the Sri Lankan citizenship after
commencing his first term as president in November 2005. The judge of the Court
of Appeal gave verdict on the former's pending court cases on 4 October 2019,
dismissed the petition challenging Gotabaya's citizenship. He was also
allowed to contest at the elections but did not take part in the debate among Presidential
candidates which was held on 5 October 2019, was also historically Sri Lanka's
first-ever debate to have been conducted among Presidential candidates for an
upcoming election. Rajapaksa's name was included in the Quarterly Publication of Individuals Who
Have Chosen to Expatriate for Q2 2020.
Indicator based Discovery: One wonders whether the Sri Lankan President is directly or
indirectly being blackmailed by the American Government. The bait was given by
the Court that used ‘Common Law’ protection which would apply to Mr Rajapaksa as
a politician – now that he has given up US Citizenship. The appropriate Tamil
saying is ‘Arasanai Nambi Purusanai Kai vitta kathai/ The story of abandoning
the husband to become dependent on the king!