Rs.18 Mn fine imposed on Lalith Kotalawala, 8 others

The Colombo High Court yesterday imposed a fine and compensation of Rs.18 Million to Golden Key Chairman Lalith Kotalawala, Cecilia Kotalawala and Seven other members of the Board of Directors of Golden Key who pleaded guilty to the charges of accepting people’s money deposits by running an unauthorised financial business contrary to the Finance Act.

The case was taken up before Colombo High Court Judge Adithya Patabandige and he fined each accused Rs.1.05 million for each charge due to the initial plea of guilty to the charges by the accused and ordered a compensation of Rs.1 million each.

The High Court Judge also sentenced each accused to 10 years of Rigorous Imprisonment if they were unable to pay the fine and also ordered to collect the compensation of Rs.1 million as a fine if the compensation is not paid.The accused pleaded guilty to nine Charges including accepting public deposits from 1999 to 2008 while running an unauthorized financial institution in violation of the Finance Act.

After considering the facts of setting up a private money trust for the depositors of the Golden Key Company and making arrangements to repay the deposited money from the personal property of the accused, the fact that the trial of the case assigned by the Attorney General has not yet started, and if a trial was started, it would take a lot of time to hear the testimony of 778 witnesses and give a verdict, the High Court Judge decided to impose these fines and compensation due to the admission of guilt.

The Attorney General filed case against 9 accused under 91 counts in 2011 and the Attorney General proceeded to withdraw the charges from the tenth charge to 91 charge including criminal misappropriation of money.The facts had come to light that the Golden Key Company had accepted more than Rs.72 Million of people’s money as deposits.