Category: Legal

KUWAIT CITY, Oct 2, 2007 (AFP) – An Islamist lawmaker in Kuwait called for the interior ministry on Tuesday to draw up a blacklist of employers who mistreat their domestic helpers and urged stiff penalties for physical abuse.MP Waleed al-Tabtabai said in a statement that employers who abuse their maids “physically or morally” should be […]

Oct 01, 2007 (LBO) – The United States visa lottery for would-be immigrants will be opened on Wednesday, October 3, and participation is without any charge, the US embassy in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo said. Lottery winners will be notified between May and July, 2008 and have a one-year window in which they may […]

KOMOTINI, Greece, Sept 29, 2007 (AFP) – Greek border guards arrested 69 illegal immigrants and seven suspected people smugglers who were trying to enter the country from Turkey, police said on Saturday.The immigrants, all men aged between 25 and 45, were from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iraq and Sri Lanka. The group had on Friday crossed […]

Sept 27, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s new company law has made it easier to start new ventures but winding up procedures are still cumbersome, a new World Bank study has said. In countries where bankruptcy is inefficient, unviable businesses linger for years, keeping assets and human capital from being reallocated to more productive uses, […]

Sept 26, 2007 (AFP) – High taxes and red tape are eroding confidence in Sri Lanka, one of the worst places to do business in South Asia, a study by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) showed Wednesday. The research which ranked 178 countries around the world on trade, taxation, business start-up costs, labour laws and […]

Sept 26, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lanka has slipped ten places in a global ranking of public sector corruption, the latest study by anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International shows. . The island was placed the 94th least transparent country among 180 nations in 2007, down from 84th place a year earlier in a corruption perceptions index […]

Sept 14, 2007 (LBO) – The hearing of the case on the sale Sri Lanka Telecom shares by its Japanese shareholder has been put off till November 22, lawyers said. Lawmaker Sripathi Sooriyarachchi who was sacked earlier in the year as a minister by President Mahinda Rajapakse, went to court alleging that the sale caused […]

Sept 10, 2007 (LBO) – The head of Sri Lanka’s consumer authority has been ordered to resign by the Supreme Court over the implementation of a previous order on cooking gas pricing. . Updated Consumer Authority Chairman Sarath Wijesinghe was told he was not fit to take up any government post, an official said. Witnesses […]

Sept 10, 2007 (LBO) – A Sri Lankan teenager Rizana Nafeek who is on death row is being treated well by her jailors and was hoping an appeal of her sentence will succeed, media reports said. Sometimes prisoners are kept on death row for years, before suddenly being taken and beheaded. “Rizana was so confident […]

Sept 9, 2007 (AFP) – Sri Lankan authorities have launched a crackdown on Indian nationals who arrive as tourists and stay on to work, an immigration official said Sunday.Eight Indian men were arrested Friday in the south of the island, where they had been employed as farm workers, the official said, adding that all had […]

Sept 08, 2007 (LBO) – A rival bunker supplier has joined the court action challenging the sale of Sri Lanka’s then-bunkering monopoly, Lanka Marine Services, which has now emerged as one of John Keells Holdings main money-spinners. Reza in the affidavit also said that the company believes the LMS privatization was fraudulent and not done […]

Sept 07, 2007 (LBO) – A Sri Lankan court Friday sentenced four directors of an export company that went bust several years ago to jail and imposed fines in the country’s first ever securities fraud conviction. They were charged with non-disclosure of material information of a price-sensitive nature. Colombo’s Fort Magistrate’s court sentenced the four […]