The Ambassador, His Swanky New Embassy and the Limits of Diplomatic Immunity

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The U.S. is doing Sri Lanka's dirty work in prosecuting its ex-ambassador for fraud, and it may eventually be cause for discomfort along Embassy Row.

his crisis-stricken home country, where anti-corruption protests this month ousted the president. One of the major complaints against the now-former leader was that they filled the government with crooked relatives.In the Sri Lankan press, the fact that the scam had to be prosecuted by the U.S.

How this particular diplomat wound up facing a potential five years in federal prison is a twisting saga that involves politics in both countries. It begins in 2005, when nationalist politician Mahinda Rajapaksa was elected president of Sri Lanka and promptly began naming relatives to top posts. One of them was Wickramasuriya, then an Atlanta resident who ran a tea-import business. In 2008, he became his country’s ambassador in Washington.

Things unraveled pretty quickly. Repeated blunderous attempts to get the title company to cut a $250,000 check to the Sri Lankan business caught the attention of authorities in both countries, who found it suspicious that the ambassador was using his personal email to direct payments. The ambassador hastily repaid the money. It was too late: Fraud is still fraud even if the loot has been returned.

It’s not clear why U.S. prosecutors were so hot to trot on what was by then an old case involving a comparatively small dollar figure and money that had already been returned. At the State Department, officials typically don’t like this sort of prosecution, which other governments could theoretically deploy against Americans.

Source: Law Daily Report (lawdailyreport.net)

 

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