Ousted Sri Lankan president interrogated over cash stash
Former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is interrogated over hidden cash stash amid the country's economic crisis.
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Sri Lanka's President Ranil Wickremesinghe (L), along with the country's former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, attend the annual Buddhist Navam procession at the Gangaramaya Temple in Colombo on February 5, 2023. (AFP)
Sri Lankan police told AFP on Wednesday that they are looking into former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's hidden cash stash, which was discovered when protesters stormed his former residence last year.
Rajapaksa presided over an unprecedented economic crisis that left the island nation's 22 million people without food, fuel, or pharmaceuticals for months.
He fled the country last July after an angry mob besieged his compound, and tendered his resignation from abroad, but he has since returned and is living under armed guard.
Protesters occupied Rajapaksa's presidential palace for several days, discovering 17.5 million rupees ($48,000) hidden in his private quarters, and later handed it over to police.
Police investigators "recorded a three-hour long statement from the former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa on the cash found in the president's house", a police spokesperson told AFP.
The economy behind the political turmoil
Sri Lanka has been burdened with months of lack of food, fuel, and medicine, extended power cuts, and inflation, following a foreign exchange crisis that left importers unable to pay for vital goods and a turn of events that saw the island's former President chased from the country and bankruptcy filed with mounting foreign debt.
July witnessed huge protests in the country, and an angry crowd entered the official residence of Rajapaksa, who as a result fled the island and issued his resignation from Singapore.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) board will need to agree on Thursday's staff agreement, which depends on Sri Lanka finalizing a deal to restructure its $51 billion in foreign debt with creditors. The IMF has set a $2.9 billion bailout amount for the revival of the country's economy.
