CJ GOT RS 1.5 M DISCOUNT OFFICIAL SAYS UNDER OATH

*Discount given as she heard ‘our cases’

*She played with hard-earned depositors’ money

Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake was given a Rs 1.5 million discount on a house she purchased, an official allied to the Ceylinco group of companies (allied to the Golden Key company), testifying before the Parliamentary Select Committee stated on oath, PSC members told the media at the Editors’ breakfast meeting yesterday.

They said that this company official has been asked by PSC members why the discount was given, and he had said simply, ‘because she was a hearing cases that involved our company and we thought it fit to do so.’ However, the CJ never stood down from the Bench though she got that discount.

“She could have been blackmailed on the basis of this alone and the integrity and independence of the judiciary compromised,” the President said.

This was a clear case of misdoing, and as for not declaring assets, it is a jailable offence for a public servant, the PSC members added.

The President said at the breakfast meeting that the highest standards were expected from the Judiciary -- more so than from a Member of Parliament who has to face the voters, which is why the CJ should have stood down until her name was cleared.

The President stated that in the US a judge was impeached once, simply because his wife had been repeatedly hosted to lunch by a company whose cases the judge heard.

PSC member Minister Wimal Weerawansa said the CJ was doing all this while hearing the Golden Key case, and that this was after all a case that was about the hard earned money of very ordinary depositors. She was holding such litigants to ransom -- by purchasing discounted houses from the same concern.