Gota questioned over ‘gold’ statues
The Financial Crimes Investigations Division (FCID) yesterday questioned former Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa as to how the gold seized by the Customs Department was used to make statues kept at the Sandahiru Seya chamber.
Rajapaksa arrived at the FCID yesterday around 9.30 a.m.
The FCID received a complaint that the statues enshrined in the chamber are not made of gold though gold worth millions of rupees were acquired from the Customs Department to make these statues.
It was said the statues were gold plated.
He was questioned for two hours over his alleged involvement in this incident.
The former Defence Secretary was further questioned as to how the Defence Ministry obtained gold for this although it was in the possession of the Customs Department.
(Source: Daily News – By Vijayani Edirisinghe)
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paper money tradionallly was backed by gold and the amount gold reserves were held by the treasury and not by the customs. Indeed customs do arrest gold that is smuggled into the country. How this is accounted nobody knows and whatever revenue gold currency that is made by the customs ultimately need to be declaredto the treasury, So how did the customs manage to stash so much gold to give gota for his enterprise.
It is no secret that the customs is not corrupt most of the stuff that is detected is by accident and then these are given big publicity for this reason sri lankan port authority iis declared a hyb for international smuggling and it is from these proceeds that minister of ports built the christmas tree on the galle face green costing millions of rupees.
there is techonology avalible to detect stuff buried these may not be able to provide any specifics but these however systems could detect the size of the cache and if they are huge then the form.
That gold from Customs grew legs and walked into someone’s personal vaults.
The investigation of the statue is quite simple without being intrusive.
Using Archimedes’ Principle, find its density by dipping into a bowl of water; the truth will be revealed; the Deities will not be offended too; they are just being given a bath.
5 container loads of unknown goods moved in Colombo 3 on the night of the 08 Jan, 2015; contents and destination still unknown.