AN ASSESSMENT ON THE ADEQUACY OF EXISTING LAWS TO COMBAT WHITE COLLAR CRIMES IN SRI LANKA

Sri Lanka has been recently reported with a plenty of notorious white collar crimes even if it is having a considerable number of pieces of legislation in regarding white collar crimes. These enactments appear to be not rich enough to provide an exhaustive safeguard against the white collar crimes recently committed in the country. Many of them have not addressed the modern white collar crimes which are commonly visible in the present commercial sphere. On one hand some statutes are poor in interpreting relevant crimes or related terms thereto. On the other hand some enactments have not established a proper mechanism for the implementation. Up on that ground the major purposes of the respective Act has been vitiated. Therefore, there is a real issue an to the adequacy of existing legal framework in Sri Lanka to combat white collar crimes. In addition to that the scholars in the field of law have not approached in an adequate manner to address this issue.The researcher by critically analyzing the existing legislative enactments, judicial decisions and legal literature on the subject concludes that the existing laws in Sri Lanka to combat white collar crimes are not adequate. At the same time the researcher recommends reforms to be made to the existing legal framework in order to make it adequate and effective.