Editorial
There is something deeply unsettling about a country fighting corruption while simultaneously contemplating a legal mechanism that could allow a participant in corruption to escape prosecution by telling the authorities what he knows. The argument for such a provision is easy to understand: expose the bigger fish, recover stolen assets and dismantle corrupt networks from the inside. But that is precisely why the proposal deserves far more scrutiny than the bland language of an amendment normally receives. The real question is not whether informants can be useful. Of course they can. The real question is this: who decides when a corrupt accomplice has said enough to deserve freedom?
The proposed amendment to Sri Lanka’s Anti-Corruption Act would give the Director General of the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption the power, in specified circumstances, not to prosecute an accomplice or to withdraw proceedings already instituted. The condition is that the person makes a full or true disclosure of the circumstances within his knowledge relating to the offence. On paper, this sounds like a weapon against sophisticated corruption. In practice, however, it creates a dangerous question of discretion. A person accused of corruption could potentially become a bargaining chip: tell us what you know, and the state may decide that you are more valuable outside the dock than inside it.
There is nothing inherently absurd about cooperating offenders receiving concessions. Countries across the world use such mechanisms because major criminal conspiracies are rarely uncovered by catching only the smallest participant. An insider can reveal the people behind the scheme, identify hidden assets and explain how money moved. Even international anti-corruption frameworks recognise the value of substantial cooperation. But mature legal systems do not simply say, “Confess and go home.” They build safeguards around the bargain. They define the conditions, establish the evidentiary threshold, regulate the discretion and, in many systems, involve prosecutors or courts in determining the consequences.
That distinction matters enormously in Sri Lanka. The problem is not the idea of cooperation; it is the possibility of turning prosecutorial discretion into a private negotiation between the state and a suspect. Imagine a corruption case involving several people. One participant possesses information about the entire operation. He also happens to have benefited from it. If he knows that his own prosecution can be abandoned, what prevents him from exaggerating his knowledge, shifting blame, selectively revealing information or sacrificing lesser participants in order to save himself? And who determines whether his disclosure is genuinely “full and true”? The person making the disclosure has an obvious interest in the outcome.
There is an even more uncomfortable question. What happens when the person with information is politically connected, commercially powerful or close to those who control institutions? A law granting broad discretion may work perfectly when everyone involved is honest, independent and accountable. Laws, however, are not written for imaginary countries populated by angels. They are written precisely because power can be abused. A provision that looks efficient in a textbook can become dangerous when transplanted into a political system where public confidence in institutions has repeatedly been shaken.
The government cannot demand that citizens believe its anti-corruption campaign while simultaneously asking them not to question the machinery through which corruption cases may be abandoned. If billions of rupees have allegedly been stolen from the public, the public deserves more than recovered money and a press conference announcing that a grateful accomplice has been spared prosecution. It deserves to know why he was spared, what he disclosed, what evidence was obtained, what assets were recovered and who independently reviewed the decision.
There is a simple principle here: the bigger the power to forgive, the stronger the system of accountability must be. If the state wants an accomplice to become a witness, fine. If it wants information in exchange for leniency, fine. But immunity cannot become a secret currency of justice. The law must ensure that the person who gets the bargain is not simply the person who knows how to bargain best.
Sri Lanka has spent years promising to end impunity. It should therefore be extremely careful about creating a legal door through which impunity can return wearing the respectable clothes of cooperation. Catch the big fish, certainly. Recover the stolen wealth, absolutely. Use insiders to expose corrupt networks, unquestionably. But do not ask the public to surrender its right to know who was forgiven, why they were forgiven and who had the power to forgive them.
Otherwise, the country may discover an old truth in a new form: corruption does not always survive by breaking the law. Sometimes it survives because the law gives someone the discretion to look the other way.
