Rajapaksa’s brother indicted by anti-graft commission

The brother of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa was among eight persons against whom the Sri Lankan graft commission filed a corruption case for causing a loss of nearly $75 million to the country on Wednesday.

Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, 67, was the powerful secretary to the Ministry of Defence under his brother's rule. He and seven others were implicated in the case that they had caused a loss of over 11 billion Sri Lankan rupees ($74.93 million) to the state.

The Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery Or Corruption has filed a case in the Colombo magistrate court. The case involves illegal setup of a floating armory in the southern port of Galle during August 2012 and January 2015. The floating armory operation through a private company was alleged to be a violation of the law when the Sri Lankan Navy ought to have been the state agency to carry out the operation.

The floating armory was seized by the police after Rajapaksa lost the presidential election in January, 2015 and the operation was later handed back to the navy. The Rajapaksa family has faced many cases of alleged wrongdoings during the decade when they were in power. They have dubbed 

all cases as politically motivated to extract revenge from them.