The Government would act to acquire LTTE assets overseas, to utilize them for the development activities in the country, Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake told Parliament yesterday (8).

The Premier said intelligence authorities were now gathering information on LTTE assets, and the progress of such investigations could not be revealed prematurely.

Chief Opposition Whip, Joseph Michael Perera asked about the fate of large quantities of gold items recovered from the LTTE after the death of its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran on May 19, 2009. He also requested the government to reveal information extracted from LTTE International Wing Leader Kumaran Pathmanathan alias KP who was now in custody.

“We know that the gold reserves recovered from the LTTE were handed over to the government on November 26. We also heard that a lot of information on LTTE assets such as ships have been extracted from KP. There is information about 600 bank accounts maintained by the LTTE all over the world,” Perera mentioned in his question.

The Prime Minister responded that investigations had been carried out with regard to the gold items seized from the LTTE.

Referring to the LTTE ships, he said some of them had been destroyed by the Sri Lanka Navy and the intelligence wings were now trying to verify information about the remainders.

“We have extracted valuable intelligence in this regard. The revelation of such information will hinder ongoing investigations,” quoting the Premier the Government's Information Department reported.