Huge money-laundering “pyramid” operation uncovered
Police seek local Tamils who were victims to give evidence
Bern and Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Ten members of LTTE, the Sri Lankan Tamil independence movement, who are resident in Switzerland were arrested Tuesday 11 January after police in several cantons raided 23 locations across the country. The sweep, coordinated by the Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s office, is the culmination of investigations that began in 2009 into money laundering operations and extortion of Tamils living in Switzerland.
The 10 have been charged with threatening behaviour, extortion, forgery of a document, money laundering, membership of, and aiding and abetting, a criminal organization. Victims in Switzerland were put under severe pressure, threatened, or subjected to extortion, according to Bern.
Police have set up a special phone line for victims and witnesses:
“who have knowledge of the operating methods of some members of the LTTE or similarly acting organizations. A special toll free phone line 0800 10 20 60 has been established for receiving relevant information. This number must only be used for relevant information in the aforementioned proceedings.”
The federal prosecutor’s office has provided a description of how the group worked, collecting millions of francs that were then used for their personal gain as well as to buy arms for Tamil Tigers, through what Bern calls an effective pyramid scheme in Switzerland:
“The money was obtained through various methods and involving different companies. The accused persons forced their fellow countrymen to borrow excessive amounts of money and to hand over the funds to the LTTE. The loans were mostly taken out based on falsified salary statements and the loan amounts considerably exceeded the actual financial means of the individual borrowers. Those who refused to help with the raising of funds were threatened and faced the prospect of reprisals. The bulk of the money, totalling several million Swiss francs, was transferred to Sri Lanka, primarily with the help of couriers via third states, or in small amounts through bank transactions. To disguise the true origin of the funds, they were invested in companies with connections to the LTTE conducting legal business.”
The raids took place in cantons Graubuenden, Zurich, St Gallen, Lucerne, Solothurn, Bern, Fribourg, Vaud, Geneva and Basel.
Former president and scion of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SFLP), Chandrika Kumaratunga, has endorsed the opposition candidate, former general Sarath Fonseka, in his bid against SFLP candidate and current president, Mahinda Rajapaksa. The move Sunday 24 January is seen as a major blow to the re-election bid by Rajapaksa in a close and increasingly violent campaign. It is the first election following the government’s victory in the long war against the Tamil Tigers last year.
Opposition parties have rallied around the former general, and accuse the ruling party of electoral fraud, of hogging the state media, and of planning a coup to seize power if the vote goes against Rajapaksa.
Links to other sites: Al-Jazeera, The Guardian, New York Times
Sri Lanka’s voters go to the polls next Tuesday 26 January in elections that were called almost two years early by the country’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa. They are almost evenly divided between supporters of the president and his main opponent, former army chief Sarath Fonseka.
Both the president and his opponent are claiming to be national heroes after last year’s victory over the separatist Tamil Tigers in the country’s decades-long war. The Tamils of the north and east are eagerly courted by both sides in the race, and presidential politics have arguably speeded up the government’s dismantling of the remaining displacement camps, set up to house and screen the hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians displaced by the civil war.
The Tamil Tigers were fighting for a separate homeland, arguing that Tamils suffered discrimination and neglect at the hands of the majority Sinhalese.
Links to other sites: AFP, Al-Jazeera, Sri Lanka Guardian
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said Monday 14 September that an “intolerable” number of displaced people continue to live in camps”, and added that in the case of Sri Lanka “internally displaced persons are effectively detained under conditions of internment”. Some 280,000 civilians are interned in government-run camps waiting to be screened. In a reply to the council, Sri Lanka’s minister of disaster management and human rights, Mahinda Samarasinghe, said that “this is furthest from the truth “, and pointed out that the civilians will be allowed to leave the “relief villages and welfare centers once they are screened”. The government is worried that former Tamil Tiger fighters may flee disguised as civilians. Samarasinghe said that almost 170,000 people had been registered and that 45,000 had been cleared to leave the camps or had already left.
The UN’s head of political affairs, Lynn Pascoe, arrived in Sri Lanka for two days of talks with the government on the slow pace of releasing Tamil civilians from camps where they have been held since the end of the war in May against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam separatist group. The BBC quoted Pascoe as saying, “We’re very concerned about the pace of progress,” before leaving New York. BBC, Bloomberg
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has rejected claims that the UN had purposefully withheld casualty figures in the final phase of Sri Lanka’s war against the Tamil Tigers. “I categorically reject – repeat, categorically – any suggestion that the United Nations has deliberately underestimated any figures,” he said in a speech to the General Assembly Monday 1 June. The rebuttal comes after claims made last week by France’s Le Monde newspaper that the UN under-reported figures of civilian deaths in order to maintain a presence in the country. Reuters
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – World headlines about endless casualties and aid organizations being kept out of Sri Lanka’s conflict area have died away, last week’s news, but the battle to find out what really happened and how many died may be only beginning, media reports 29 May show. Le Temps and Le Monde jointly carry an article by reporter Philippe Bolopion in Colombo that accuses the Sri Lankan government of hiding the real number of deaths and the UN of collusion out of fear that its ability to work in the country would be compromised. In the UK, The Times front-page story Friday 29 May says that 20,000 civilians – three times the official number – were killed.
The Times story is based on photos taken on the beaches in the conflict area, UN documents as well as “witness accounts and expert testimony.” The numbers are in fact the same as those published a day earlier by Le Monde, which also cites UN sources. The photos were taken for The Times. Le Monde refers to satellite images taken by Unosat of the conflict area, which reportedly show shelling damage, possibly after the date when the Sri Lankan government said it had stopped.
In Geneva Wednesday 28 the Human Rights Council, an independent inter-UN organization, rejected a Swiss-European draft resolution to investigate possible war crimes in Sri Lanka and instead adopted a Sri Lankan counter-resolution. Human Rights Watch condemned the UNHRC move, saying it had “passed a deeply flawed resolution on Sri Lanka that ignores calls for an international investigation into alleged abuses during recent fighting and other pressing human rights concerns.”
The Tamil Tigers (LTTE) in Sri Lanka have acknowledged that Velupillai Prabhakaran, their leader, was killed fighting the Sri Lanka army 17 May, according to the BBC and several other Western and Indian media, although TamilNet and EelamNation make no mention of it in their latest news reports Sunday evening (Swiss time). In a statement attributed by the BBC and Times of India to the LTTE’s head of international relations, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, the Tamil Tigers also say they will now use “non-violence” to fight for Tamil rights.
Update 21:55 Brussels, Belgium, Canada, Sri Lanka and Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Some 1,500 Sri Lankans gathered in front of the UN building in Geneva Monday evening 18 May were pushed back by police when they tried to enter the security gates of the “Palais,” report TSR and the Tribune de Geneve, citing a police spokesperson. The group had gathered Sunday to call for international diplomatic aid for their countrymen.
The Sri Lankan government broke into regular TV programming late Monday 18 May to announce that the leader of the Tamil Tigers, Velupillai Prabhakaran, has been killed, reports AP. No details were given, and initial reports from other international media are contradictory. Several news sources quote two anonymous officials who say they are not authorized to speak to media. According to one source he was in a van, accompanied by a busload of soldiers, and a two-hour gunfight ensued with government forces . Another source says he was in an ambulance that was ambushed as he tried to escape.
The Tamil Tigers announced Saturday on their web site that they were laying down arms after nearly 26 years of fighting, to save the many injured civilians who have been cut off from medical aid. The government said Sunday that fighting was continuing in cleanup operations.
© Chappatte, distributed by Globe Cartoon. More cartoons on Chappatte’s web site. Geneva-based Patrick Chappatte works for the International Herald Tribune, for Geneva newspaper Le Temps, and for NZZ am Sonntag. All cartoons reproduced with permission.
UPDATE 07:45 The BBC reports the Sri Lankan government as saying bodies of Tamil Tiger leaders have been found as “brushing up” operations continue. The country’s Tamil Tigers have accepted defeat after 25 years of fighting, with their head of international relations saying on their web site Sunday 16 May that the “bitter end” had been reached. Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapakse told a group of G11 developing countries leaders meeting in Jordan Sunday that he is “proud” to have declared victory over the Tamil Tigers Friday 16 May, after cutting off rebel access to the sea. About 50,000 civilians fled the fighting in recent days, 36,000 on Saturday alone, reports the BBC, quoting army sources. The government had announced previously that no more than 20,000 civilians remained in the area, although 16 May the pro-Tamil tamilnet.com reported that fighting, including heavy artillery, continues in the area and that thousands of wounded civilians remain trapped. Al Jazeera, Christian Science Monitor
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – “Our staff are witnessing an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe,” ICRC (International Red Cross) Director of operations, Pierre Kraehenbuehl, said in a statement 14 May from the organization’s headquarters in Geneva. “Despite high-level assurances, the lack of security on the ground means that our sea operations continue to be stalled, and this is unacceptable. No humanitarian organization can help them in the current circumstances. People are left to their own devices.”
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A local International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) employee and his mother were killed 13 May by an army shell, reports Le Temps, in the crowded and dangerous northeast corner of Sri Lanka, where government troops are battling Tamil Tigers.
A ferry boat contracted by ICRC to take essential food and medicine to the safe area and evacuate those civilians most at risk, especially the wounded, women and children, was unable to beach Monday 12 May due to the dangerous situation, according to Paul Castella, ICRC chief delegate in Colombo. The ICRC has called for a ceasefire to allow civilians trapped by the fighting to leave.
The UN called for an immediate end to the fighting in Sri Lanka, which a UN spokesman described as a “bloodbath scenario [that] has become a reality.” reports AFP. Government forces and Tamil Tigers have both said civilian casualties are very high, with each side blaming the other. The Tigers hold a strip of coastline that was heavily attacked over the weekend. Among the dead: more than 100 children. Al Jazeera, ColomboPage, LankaPage
Almost 400 civilian are said to have been killed by government artillery fire Saturday and early Sunday, according to Tamil Tiger reports that quote medical workers in the NE Sri Lanka conflict zone. The government has denied shelling the designated safe area. Independent confirmation is impossible because Western news agencies are not allowed access.
Geneva, Switzerland and Sri Lanka (GenevaLunch) – Sri Lanka has rebuffed UN efforts for a truce that would allow more civilians to leave the country’s northeast corner, where fighting with Tamil Tigers continues. An estimated 50-100,000 people are trapped in the area, reports the BBC. In Geneva, the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) says that 63,000 have fled the area, with refugees describing dire conditions. The UNHCR says it is concerned about the growing need for de-mining in the area when refugees return home.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) has sharply condemned the suicide attack on a refugee registration centre in Sri Lanka 9 February that reportedly killed 10 people and injured some 40. The lead humanitarian aid organization for the conflict area said 10 February that it is “outraged by the unnecessary loss of hundreds of lives and the continued suffering of innocent civilians” inside the area in Sri Lanka controlled by the Tamil Tigers.
Tamil Tigers appear to have rebounded in their fight against Sri Lankan government forces, saying they killed 53 troops, while the government’s military officers denied they suffered heavy casualties, reports the BBC. The government announced two days ago it had taken Kilinochchi, the rebels’ central base, in the deepest move into Tamil territory in several years.
