The Supreme Court yesterday (9) issued a stay order preventing any further submissions before the Court of Appeal on behalf of Mohamed Kamil Katubdeen, the eighth accused and alleged mastermind in the country’s largest VAT fraud case, which involved Rs. 3.9 billion in tax evasion at the Inland Revenue Department in 2004.

The order was issued by a three-judge bench comprising Justices Janak de Silva, Mahinda Samayawardhena, and Arjuna Obeysekera after considering submissions made by Additional Solicitor General President’s Counsel Shanil Kulatunga, who appeared on behalf of the Attorney General.

The bench also directed that if any party intends to make submissions regarding the stay order, such submissions must be filed in writing within two weeks.

According to Additional Solicitor General Kulatunga, the High Court had, on 26 September 2014, found the eighth accused and several others guilty based on an indictment filed by the Attorney General and sentenced them accordingly. Three of the convicted parties, including the eighth accused, then filed appeals before the Court of Appeal.

The Court of Appeal, in a two-to-one majority decision delivered on 13 December 2023, upheld the convictions imposed by the High Court. Following this, the eighth accused filed a further appeal with the Supreme Court on 27 June 2024.

However, Kulatunga informed the Supreme Court that despite this pending appeal, the eighth accused had also filed a motion before a five-judge bench of the Court of Appeal, requesting a reconsideration of the earlier decision.

Kulatunga, appearing with Deputy Solicitor General Maheshika Silva, argued that presenting arguments simultaneously before two different courts in relation to the same matter was contrary to the law and constituted an abuse of process.

He further noted that the appeal to the Supreme Court had been filed six months after the Court of Appeal’s ruling, and that the accused, who had never personally appeared before the High Court, Court of Appeal, or Supreme Court, had instead used a third party to file these motions.

The judges of the Court of Appeal — Sampath Abeykoon and R. Gurusinghe — had concluded there was no reasonable justification to overturn the sentences, as the convictions of the eighth accused and others were based on a fair trial with credible evidence and documentation presented by the Attorney General. However, the then-President of the Court of Appeal, Nissanka Bandula Karunaratne, delivered a dissenting judgment, on acquittal of the petitioners.