What you have done is a serious betrayal, US judge tells former Lankan envoy

Jaliya Wickramasuriya, Sri Lanka’s former Ambassador in Washington, DC, got off lightly this week for defrauding the Sri Lanka Government in the purchase of a new embassy building on account of having taken a plea bargain in April this year.

Plea bargains are agreements between defendants and prosecutors in which defendants agree to plead guilty to some or all of the charges against them in exchange for concessions from the prosecutors.

On Wednesday, Mr. Wickramasuriya was sentenced at the US District Court in Washington DC. As reported by Politico, a US publication, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan handed down the punishment: two years of probation and a US$ 5,000 fine, in recognition of his having repaid the money.

“Even though this was not millions of dollars, it represents a serious theft from the people, and by a person that they entrusted to represent their interests in the capital of the most powerful country in the world,” Judge Chutkan was quoted by Politico as saying. “What you have done is a serious betrayal.”

In April this year, Mr. Wickramasuriya pleaded guilty to diverting and attempting to embezzle US$ 332,027 from the Sri Lanka Government during the purchase of a new embassy building.

According to court documents, from in or around late 2012 through November 2013, Mr Wickramasuriya devised a scheme to defraud the Government of Sri Lanka during the 2013 purchase of the new embassy building, by inflating the price of the real estate transaction by $332,027 and, at closing, diverting those funds from the Government to two companies which had no role in the real estate transaction, a statement from the US Department of Justice (DoJ) said.

At and after the January 2013 closing, Mr. Wickramasuriya directed these payments. Later in 2013, he ultimately had an equal amount of funds redirected back to government accounts, leaving the Sri Lankan Government with no loss.

Jaliya Chitran Wickramasuriya, 61, of Arlington, Virginia, served as Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to the United States and to Mexico from 2008 to 2014. He pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to a charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.