LTTE infighting in Australia leads to the crackdown

Hector Kulendraraja

LINKS: A major crack down on alleged LTTE activity by the Australian Federal Police has caused much excitement within the Sri Lankan diaspora here.

Tamil political circles were shell - shocked as the AFP in a swift, surgical strike surrounded the homes and offices of Tamils with suspected links to the LTTE and took into custody some prominent tiger activists for questioning.

They were released after statements were recorded and warrants issued. Tiger activists however were in a

 state of panic after the crackdown.

Chief among causes for this agitated frame of mind was the lurking suspicion that someone or some people from within their own ranks has turned “whistle blower”.

According to a Tiger activist speaking on condition of anonymity the Police seemed to have exact information about the goings on within LTTE ranks in Australia.

Leaked out

“They had the bank account particulars, faxes, e - mail copies, passport numbers, bank receipts, etc. They also knew who was responsible for what duty in our work”.

“They also knew the amounts of money sent to Sri Lanka and elsewhere, the dates on which they were sent and the method used to send it” he said.

“Such information could have gone only from inside. Some of our own people involved in the top positions must have leaked information to the authorities or the Police must have infiltrated us”. He blurted out.

“Even with all the top surveillance or electronic monitoring or wiretapping all this information couldn’t have been gotten by the coppers. It was too detailed” he said.

“We have a rough idea about the possible leaks but we must first meet this problem” he said.

Apparently there were major splits and infighting among Tiger activists in the recent times. The Tamil Rehabilitation Organization had become a hotbed of corruption and conspiracy. Disgruntled elements sidelined or removed from positions of power could have informed the Police is the talk going around the Tamil grapevine.

In detail

A well - informed LTTE insider described in detail the goings on within Australian TRO circles as follows -

“The head of TRO International and well connected to TRO Australia is none other than Jeyarajah “Jay” Maheswaran from Australia, who also represented the LTTE at the Peace negotiations when it began in 2002.

He also worked very closely from Kilinochchi with the UN Agencies and other INGO’s. Lately, he was sidelined by the LTTE and TRO, due to reasons unknown.

Maheswaran brought in the Pararajasingham brothers to Kilinochchi, and they worked out of Kilinochchi. Later the younger brother Chandru Pararajasingham was the defacto CEO of the TRO operating out of Colombo, when tsunami struck Sri Lanka just after Christmas.

TRO who were struggling for funds to coordinate the resettlement of the nearly 800,000 IDPs, refugees from Point Pedro-Mannar to Pottuvil, and well placed with small regional offices along the coastline was better placed than any organization or NGO to handle the tsunami problem. They received the close cooperation and assistance from the LTTE.

It was a windfall for TRO which according to reliable sources collected and received around 55 Million US dollars, from 119 countries, INGO’s, and other agencies.

Due to several irregularities in the Colombo office highlighted by knowledgeable Tamils and Tamil donors Chadru Pararajasingham was suddenly removed from TRO and sent home on leave in March this year.

His close associate Narendran who went on leave in the heat of tsunami in February, was not invited to return. So was Chadru’s Australian second wife, Margaret.

However, in July Chandru to everyone’s surprise was back in his luxurious “hot seat” in Colombo and his luxury home paid for by TRO in Colombo, handling all the finances and operations. His buddy was sent as TRO’s Ambassador in the UK, where TRO was “banned” recently and a million dollars of donation was seized by the British government.

Fund raising

Several fund raising opportunities in England where millions of dollars could have been raised has been lost due to inadequate handling. TRO’s international exhibitions organised by Chandru Pararajasingham spending millions of rupees on advertising and promotional companies have been shelved in summer.

According to TRO’s own public statements to the Sri Lanka media a new organisation has been created with the “sister organisations” called ITRO. Narendran as the CEO of ITRO in the UK and cordinates with the VENN PURA organisation, which has now replaced the banned TRO as the main Tamil NGO.

Other main players of this ITRO are Chandru Pararajasingham, his associate who was involved with all the Colombo post tsunami activities, Thasam Gunanayagam from San Jose California, K P Regie who is the “official” TRO head in Sri Lanka. In September Chandru was again removed from Colombo TRO for mysterious reasons.

TRO worldwide has been collecting funds for the tsunami victims.

However, allegations are plenty on the manner the funds were used, as to the waste, and inefficiency, and some instances of nepotism and corruption when the Sri Lankan Customs, unlicensed Muslim Freight Forwarding agent’s activities with TRO was exposed.

A major cover up followed, to protect certain individuals and now even Chandru Pararajasingham is covering up the prosecution of the Muslim Freight forwarding agent and his close associates. The Muslim agent will walk free; in return of the favour that he does not “spill the beans”.

An Australian millionaire who had volunteered to assist the TRO worked in Colombo for a few months and then quit the TRO in disgust a few months ago.

The former CEO of Glaxo who volunteered to work at the Colombo office in January gave up in a few weeks, accusing the TRO of unmentionable conduct.

Guilty

TRO worldwide was also guilty of appointing some undesirable representatives in some cities who were associated with undesirable elements and close relatives of their own, who are having their own secret agenda, and are guilty of operating it as a “secret organisation” in certain cities.

It is this split and division within the Australian TRO personnel that led to information being leaked to authorities it is suspected.

Whatever or whoever the informants who provided special information to the authorities the entire operation carried out by the Police was a “blitzkreig”.

In a surprise swoop the Federal Police arrested for questioning more than 15 LTTE operatives and raided offices of LTTE front organisations and homes of suspected LTTE operatives. Computer hardware, passports, cash, diaries, bank receipts, cheque stumps, and other records were seized.

According to some sources, the operation followed painstaking investigations conducted over many months into the activities of LTTE operatives and LTTE front organisations allegedly involved in fund raising and money laundering.

Federal Police targeted members of the Tamils Coordinating Committee, Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation and Tamil Medical Aid which are identified as LTTE front organisations operating in Australia despite an Australian Government ban on the fund - raisiing activity of the LTTE.

Police raided the Melbourne office of the Tamils Coordinating Committee (TCC) which functions as the headquarters for LTTE’s operation in Australia and New Zealand.

Several other premises including a printing press, grocery stores and private homes were also raided.

Uncovered

Australian Federal Police have uncovered an LTTE international network of front organisations, companies, business establishments and factories in Australia, and in countries like Malaysia used as fronts for LTTE’s international money laundering, fund raising and arms running activities.

Tamil Coordinating Committee, Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation, World Tamil Coordinating Committee, Tamils Medical Aid, Liberty Pharmaceutical and Medical Company, Unipex Marketing Alliance, Kaliba Company, RF Modules, Allice and Charles Pty Ltd, and Limate Pty Ltd have been identified by the Australian Federal Police as part of LTTE’s international network connected to Australia.

Among the leading figures targeted by the Australian Federal Police are Thillai Jeyakumar (the LTTE’s representative for Australia and New Zealand), Jeyarajan Maheswaran (LTTE’s Economic Advisor and member of LTTE’s delegation at Norway sponsored Sri Lankan Peace Talks) Sivarajah Yathavan (President of the TCC in Melbourne and Editor of Eelamurasu), Dr Ponniah Sathiyanathan (a Tamil Press owner), Dr. Easwaran Kanapathipillai (leading member of the Tamils Medical Aid), Arooran Vinayagamoorthy, Quilan, Abiramin Yathavan, Visakamperumal Vishnu Raj (co-owner of Venus Stores), Sundar Sunderalingam (proprietor of a Travel Agency),Rajeswaran Mailvanagam (co-owner of Venus Stores), Arumugam Ragavan, Alagaratnam Thillagarajan, Mayuran Pathmanathan, Emmanuel Jebanesan Samuel, Elilvannan and Mohan.

According to Police sources, LTTE operatives were involved in a massive fund raising operation in Australia and have managed to transfer a sum of 246 million Sri Lankan rupees to the LTTE over a period of 2 1/2 years between April 2003 and November 2005.

Five of the LTTE operatives, Thillai Jeyakumar, Sivarajah Yathavan, Dr. Sathiyanathan, Abirami Yathavan and Arooran Vinayagamoorthy are to be charged for violating UN Security Council Resolution 1373, the key resolution prohibiting terrorist activity, and the Australian Criminal Code Act of 1995.

They face four charges under Section 102.3 and 102.6 of the Criminal Code

a) for being intentionally members of a terrorist organisation,

b) receiving or making available funds for a terrorist organisation, c) intentionally provided or collected funds to be used to facilitate terrorist acts, intentionally providing support and resources to a terrorist organisation, and for

d) dealing with assets of a terrorist organisation.

Certain provisions of the Commonwealth Criminal Act are also likely to be invoked.

The Australian Federal Police action against the Tigers comes in the wake of reports that the LTTE is engaged in a massive fund raising operation allegedly for the final war for a separate Eelam homeland.

Each Tamil Australian was being told to give $10,000 and business establishments $25,000 allegedly for LTTE leader’s final battle for a separate state in North East Sri Lanka. The raid has reportedly disrupted the Heroes Day celebrations being organised by TRO in Sydney and Melbourne.

Toughest

The Melbourne raid is the toughest action so far by a Western government against overseas LTTE organizations so far.

It is also reported that several copies of the book “War and Peace in Sri Lanka” written by Tiger ideologue Anton Balasingham were also seized by the Police in the raid.

The head of the TRO in Australia, Melbourne-based gynaecologist Rajan Rasiah, was unaware that any of his members were raided but revealed his organisation’s fundraising had jumped fivefold after the tsunami, which ravaged the nation, from $200,000 a year in charitable donations to $1.1million.

When Australian Journalists, Cameron Stewart and Natasha Robinson, spoke to him Dr. Rasiah insisted that the TRO had no choice but to co-operate with the Tigers, also known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or LTTE, in directing charitable contributions because they controlled northeast parts of the country.

“You have to work with the permission, with the approval and with the support of the LTTE if you want to work in the north-east,” Dr Rasiah said.

While the Tigers are not officially proscribed as a terrorist organisation in Australia, they are considered to be engaged in terrorist activity in their homeland.

In an attempt perhaps to share the fame the Sri Lankan High Commission claimed credit for the action.

Sri Lankan Deputy High Commissioner Asoka Girihagama told “The Australian” newspaper that Sri Lanka had passed information to Australia about suspected fundraising by the Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation.

Fund raising

“We have heard bad news about the TRO’s fundraising activities in Australia,” he said. “We have kept the Australian Government very well informed about these activities.”

According to some observers the Australian action comes four years after the Australian government pledged to freeze assets of over 200 individuals and organisations including the LTTE. This was revealed ahead of Biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) at Coolum, Brisbane in early March 2002.

On the first day of the four-day summit Commonwealth leaders including British Premier Tony Blair and Australian Premier John Howard, unanimously adopted a plan in which countries supporting terrorist groups would be expelled.

The CHOGM taking place in the backdrop of the 9/11 al-Qaeda strikes on the US, declared that there was no place for any member nation that aided, supported, instigated, financed or harboured terrorists.

The anti-terrorist strategy adopted at the March 2002 CHOGM had been prepared by a ten-member Commonwealth ministerial-level committee that included India and Sri Lanka. The committee was appointed by the former New Zealand Foreign Minister and the Secretary General of the Commonwealth Don Makinnon following fierce criticism that he ignored the al-Qaeda attacks.

The strategy is designed to assist member countries in the implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution calling for international action against terrorism.

It covers assistance to member countries to ratify and implement UN anti-terrorist conventions, a review of Commonwealth Extradition and Mutual assistance in criminal matters to ensure they can operate effectively to combat terrorism, other measures to increase low enforcement co-operation, measures to combat money laundering and financing of terrorism.

(Tamil Week)