posted June 28, 2000 10:32 AM            

TORONTO (Associated Press) -- A former Royal Canadian Mounted Police translator involved in police intelligence has been arrested for allegedly failing to disclose his links to Tamil separatist guerrillas in Sri Lanka. RCMP investigators allege Kumaravelu Vignarajah is a high-ranking member of the Tamil Tigers, which are fighting for a separate homeland in Sri Lanka. Vignarajah, 37, is charged with obstruction of justice and with perjury relating to information he gave on his refugee claim when he arrived in Canada in 1989. RCMP Const. Michele Paradis said the charges relate to Vignarajah's failure to declare his membership in the Tamil Tigers. Police said they believe he was trying to infiltrate the RCMP for the Tigers. Vignarajah was arrested Thursday in a Toronto-area bank branch where he was a teller. He worked as a translator for the Mounties from July to November 1994. Paradis said the RCMP is still trying to determine what role Vignarajah played in the Tigers, which has staged a long, bloody war against the Sri Lankan government. Police are concerned that Vignarajah may have been working on sensitive documents relating to Sri Lanka, although he did not have a high-level security clearance.

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Maclean's Magazine of August 5,1996.
Banker, Tiger,soldier,spy
A Tamil immigrant's arrest masks a tale of international intrigue.
Deals with Kumaravelu Vignarajah who was working for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He was a member of the LTTE. His "code" name with the LTTE was "Nishantan" - there is a picture of him with a gun with other LTTE and the dead body of an Indian peacekeeper who had been killed. There are 30 other leading figures from various Tamil rebel groups as well as up to 10,000 former guerillas now in Canada having come here as refugees, most of them having concealed their past. He was a close aide to "Mahathaya". India Today in Nov. 1987 had on its cover the picture of Vignaraja standing over the dead bodies of slaughtered Indian peacekeepers. In 1994 $6.8 million was transferred from the bank account of an LTTE front organization in Canada to a bank account in western Europe and then to the Ukraine. These funds were used to buy explosives that were smuggled to Sri Lanka aboard an LTTE owned ship registered in Honduras. These explosives have been used in 5 terrorists attacks that have killed more than 200 people including Gamini Dissanayake.