COLOMBO
(AFP) - Sri Lanka's police Friday seized a fleet of more than 50 state-owned
vehicles, including bullet-proof limousines, that were not returned after
president Mahinda Rajapakse's toppling in this month's elections.
A police
spokesman said 53 vehicles belonging to the presidential secretariat had been
recovered from an open patch of land in Colombo as part of efforts to track
down 128 vehicles that disappeared after the January 8 polls.
"We are
conducting investigations on how these 53 vehicles ended up at this yard,"
Ajith Rohana told AFP.
Some of the
cars were wrecks while others appeared to have been hastily abandoned with
bottles of water and food left inside.
More than
half the vehicles were bullet-proof, Mr Rohana added.
Among the
vehicles was an armour-plated BMW that was wrecked in a claymore mine attack in
Colombo in 2006. Its passenger, the then defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse,
the president's younger brother, escaped without injury.
The cars
were found a day after the new government of President Maithripala Sirisena
pledged to trace billions of dollars in stolen wealth stashed abroad by members
of the previous regime.
Mr Rajapakse
and his powerful family are accused of syphoning large sums of money from the
public coffers during his decade in power, which ended when he was voted out
this month.
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