MP Ravi Karunanayake appeared before the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption on Monday morning to give a statement, ending a standoff in which he had failed to answer four earlier summonses in the same investigation.
The former finance minister arrived at the commission shortly after 9 a.m., Ada Derana and NewsFirst reported. NewsFirst said the appearance was in response to a summons issued by the commission, and that he had been notified to attend on four previous occasions without presenting himself.
The appearance follows a visit by commission officers to his residence on Saturday, after which CIABOC said it would take legal action against him for repeatedly failing to appear.
Outlets differ on the scale of the allegation
The three newsrooms do not describe the investigation in the same terms.
NewsFirst said Karunanayake was summoned over the recruitment of five officers to the National Lotteries Board on a contract basis, outside the approved procedure, and their attachment to his personal staff. That matches the account NewsFirst gave on Saturday.
The Daily Mirror put the figure at three employees, recruited for a special project of the National Lotteries Board and then allegedly deployed for political activities, causing a financial loss to the government.
The two descriptions are not necessarily contradictory — one emphasises an irregular recruitment procedure, the other what the recruits were subsequently used for — but the headcount differs, and neither outlet reconciled it. Ada Derana’s report was a single sentence and did not describe the investigation at all.
The outlets also characterise Saturday’s visit differently. NewsFirst said officers “conducted a search” at the Rajamalwatta Road, Battaramulla residence; the Daily Mirror said a team of officials “visited” the residence and were unable to meet him. Neither reported a warrant.
The wedding explanation resurfaces
The Daily Mirror reported that after Karunanayake failed to appear, his lawyers requested another date, citing arrangements related to his daughter’s wedding, and that Monday’s appearance was made as instructed in that subsequent notice.
That places the wedding explanation later in the sequence than NewsFirst did on Saturday, when it reported the wedding had been given as the reason for missing the July 30 summons, with lawyer unavailability cited for a later date. No outlet published a full timeline reconciling the four missed dates with the reasons given for each.
What remains unreported
None of the three outlets said how long Karunanayake was questioned, whether he completed his statement, or whether he is being treated as a suspect or a witness. None reported whether the commission will still pursue the legal action it announced on Saturday now that he has appeared, and none carried a comment from Karunanayake or his lawyers.
In the same investigation, former National Lotteries Board chairperson Sharmila Perera was arrested and released on bail on June 30 on two sureties of Rs. 1 million each.
Karunanayake has featured in several matters before investigators and the courts. In June the Supreme Court addressed the prosecution of the treasury bond case involving him and former Central Bank governor Arjuna Mahendran, whose extradition remains blocked by a legal barrier. LankaNewz has not established a link between those matters and the National Lotteries Board investigation, and none of the three outlets connected them.
