A Writ petition has been filed at the Court of Appeal Sri Lanka over the issue of conversion of foreign currency earnings into Sri Lankan Rupees.
The petition has been filed by the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) naming Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa, Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) Governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal, and the Monetary Board of the CBSL as respondents.
The BASL has stated that its members in Sri Lanka provide professional services in Sri Lanka and outside the country, and are paid their professional fees both in local and foreign currency.
In the event where payment of professional fees are made in foreign currency for the services provided by its members within or outside Sri Lanka, the BASL stressed that such foreign currency is remitted to and deposited in Personal Resident Foreign Currency Accounts (PRFCA), Special Deposit Accounts (SDA) or other permitted accounts in Licensed Commercial Banks in Sri Lanka, in such currency without conversion into Sri Lankan Rupees.
The BASL pointed out that the entirety of the professional fees for services provided to a person resident outside Sri Lanka and derived in foreign currency is for the entirety of services provided as a professional and cannot be described as “Repatriation of Export Proceeds into Sri Lanka”.
Thereby, the BASL has called for the purported Gazette Extraordinary 2251/42 of 28th October 2021 marked “P3” quashed, as being ultra vires the powers of the 1st Respondent and as being unlawful, irrational, unjustifiable, arbitrary, capricious, in breach of all principles of justice, and due process, and therefore vitiated in law and liable to be quashed.
The BASL further said that such draconian measures of forcefully converting or threatening to convert the foreign currency of Attorneys at Law who are members of the BASL amounts to a form of expropriation of private property which is both unconstitutional and wholly illegal and which cannot be sanctioned in law.
Thus, the BASL has sought for a declaration to be granted that Gazette Extraordinary 2251/42 of 28th October 2021 under the Monetary Law Act No. 58 of 1949 marked “P3” is null and void and of no force or effect in law. (NewsWire)