Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe today demanded a probe into the whereabouts of nearly 150-kg gold seized by the army from fleeing minority- Tamils during the country's civil war, after it emerged that 40-kg of this jewelery was already unaccounted for.
The army has seized huge quantities of jewelery and gold, nearly 150-kg, from the 300,000 fleeing Tamil civilians during the last stages of war against the separatist-LTTE in 2009.
Answering a question in the parliament, the prime minister said that while 30-kg of gold valued at Rs 131 million was handed to the Central Bank and 80-kg is still held by the military, the remaining 40-kg of precious yellow metal is unaccounted for, implying that it may have been stolen.
"There are discrepancies. There are conflicting accounts of what happened to the gold. We must investigate this," Wickremesinghe said, calling on the parliament to set up a special panel to probe the whereabouts of the missing treasure that consists of necklaces, bangles, bracelets and other personal items of gold jewelery.
Wickremesinghe said it was up to the parliament to decide on the type of the investigation.
The army had collected the gold, gems and personal jewelery items from the abandoned homes of fleeing Tamils in 2009. More was discovered when the military stooped on the banks operated by the LTTE in the former war-zones of north and east, where the separatist militant group ran a parallel administration.
In 2014, the military had identified 2,377 "legitimate claimants" of the gold, however, only 25 of them were handed back their gold ornaments during President Mahinda Rajapaksa's regime.
The LTTE was engaged in an "armed conflict" with Sri Lankan government forces for nearly three decades, but were defeated in 2009 following the death of its chief Velupillai Prabhakaran.
