Local authorities have taken a hands off approach into investigating Sri Lanka's role in the Bangladeshi Bank heist.
The CID as well as the Central Bank have said that it was now Bangladesh's case to prosecute and not theirs.
CID Director, SSP B.R.S.R Nagahamulla said: "We have given the Bangladeshis the information we have and now it is up to them to investigate".
Meanwhile, Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran at a media briefing at the Central Bank on Tuesday said: "The Bangladeshis are eventually the owners of the money, they have to pursue the case". An officer from the Bangladeshi investigative team said the case was getting more complicated "and we are here to understand the problem before we can move on to the solution".
The Bangladeshi investigators, however, have no jurisdiction to take action against any of the suspects in the Sri Lankan case and would thus rely on the local authorities to pursue the case.
Sources within investigation however revealed that the Bangladeshi team had sought the assistance of the local authorities to apprehend the suspects which they had said could be charged with money laundering.
As Lankan involvement in the Bangladeshi heist hangs in the balance, the Panama papers exposed three Sri Lankan companies and 22 Sri Lankan shareholders being involved in the scam while the Global Financial Integrity Report claimed that Rs 2.88 trillion in dirty money had been moved out of the country in the decade up to 2013.
The Central Bank Governor dismissed such accusations and called for comprehensive changes to the Exchange Control Act.
"As capital moves across borders seamlessly and our measures to control it through the Exchange Control Act has failed us, it is simply preventing FDIs from coming into the country. We can use other means to monitor money laundering," he said.
At Tuesday's media briefing, the Governor said it was "difficult to believe" that so much of money as per the Global Financial Integrity report had left the country.
"When you look at the balance of payments records and transactions done through banks, which are fairly credible, the value of exports and imports, the difference which are unaccounted for, don't even amount to a fraction for what has been bandied around, in some of these reports," Mahendran said.
He added: "Ninety eight percent of transactions are legitimate. They are investments in property or stock, and even though they are reported, they are passed. Only one to two percent are perceived illegitimate transactions for money laundering, terrorism and tax evasion purposes."
Any transaction into the country greater than Rs. 1 million is immediately reported to the Central Bank but in the case of the US$ 20 million Bangladeshi money which was transferred to Pan Asia bank, it was the teller at the bank and not the Central Bank which flagged the amount. This thus throws into question the resilience of our Central Bank in terms of monitoring cases of money laundering rather than our Exchange Control Act.
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