Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna MP Namal Rajapaksa told Parliament on Thursday that some senior Ministers seated in the chamber’s two front rows may have been behind the alleged theft of US$2.5 million from the Treasury, Daily Mirror reported.
“A large sum of funds cannot be transferred to a wrong bank account without the knowledge of Ministers.”
He also questioned alleged irregularities in coal procurement, asking how the shipments could have been completed so quickly. Separately, he said the SLPP had been refused the ground it requested for a rally: “Suppression cannot stop our struggle.”
He is speaking from remand
Daily Mirror does not mention it, but Rajapaksa is making the allegation while in remand custody. He was arrested by the Bribery Commission in the Airbus investigation and is attending sittings under prison escort, brought to the complex on a prison bus after the Secretary General of Parliament wrote to the Commissioner General of Prisons. When he first spoke this sitting week, he made no reference to his own case.
What the record already shows
The theft Rajapaksa is describing is the diversion of a Treasury debt repayment owed to an Australian creditor. The payment sequence was set out in Parliament on May 6 by Deputy Finance Minister Dr. Anil Jayantha Fernando: three invoices totalling US$713,757 on November 14, US$377,660 on November 28, five invoices totalling US$420,210 on January 5, and US$997,799 on January 29.
The Government learned the money had not reached the creditor on March 23, after Export Finance Australia raised it — four months after the first payment. Earlier alerts went to Sri Lanka CERT and the CID on January 9; the Central Bank’s Financial Intelligence Unit was told only on April 1.
Committee on Public Finance chairman Harsha de Silva described “monumental confusion” inside the Finance Ministry and pressed the same question Rajapaksa raised on Thursday — who signed off. “Where is the delegation of authority? Who approved these payments? One payment exceeded over USD 900,000, so where were the approval processes?” The Treasury’s report on the diversion was submitted to the committee on June 4 after a procedural standoff.
Rajapaksa’s own framing has shifted from negligence to complicity. Speaking in Horana on May 7, he put the loss at more than Rs. 800 million and said: “More than eighty crores have been stolen, but the President, the Finance Secretary, the Finance Ministry and the Central Bank are still sleeping.” On Thursday the charge was not that Ministers were asleep but that they knew.
The coal question
His procurement remarks follow an audit reported a day earlier into the Lakvijaya coal supply, which found excess payments of US$1.58 million and sulphur and ash specifications relaxed after bidding. Daily Mirror does not say whether he was referring to that audit or to a different consignment.
Update: a second outlet puts a figure on the coal allegation
The Daily Mirror compressed the coal remarks into a single question about how shipments were completed so quickly. Hiru News filed the same parliamentary speech separately and reports what was actually alleged.
Rajapaksa told the House that 120,000 metric tonnes of coal worth Rs. 4.62 billion have gone missing from 19 coal shipments brought into the country — a quantity he said is equivalent to the capacity of two entire ships.
He further claimed that substandard coal had been imported, and that large-scale irregularities occurred both before and after the consignments arrived.
That reframes the allegation. The “speed” question the Daily Mirror reported is not a complaint about scheduling; it is the shorthand for a claim that shipments were signed off as delivered when, on his account, the coal was not all there.
How it sits against the audit. The two are not the same finding. The Lakvijaya audit described a pricing and specification failure — US$1.58 million in excess payments, plus roughly US$1.73 million in surcharges forfeited when the coal size and weight specification was removed. Rajapaksa is alleging a quantity shortfall across 19 shipments, which the audit does not cover. Neither outlet says whether the 19 shipments he refers to are the same procurements the audit examined.
A note on sourcing: Hiru’s listing headline for this item reads “120,000 metric tons of cargo missing from 19 ships”; the article itself is headlined “Namal alleges massive coal shortage worth Rs. 4.62bn” and specifies coal rather than general cargo.
Not reported
Neither outlet names a Minister, gives evidence for the claim, or records a government response. Neither says which rally ground was refused, by which authority, or when. On the coal allegation, neither reports which shipments or supplier are involved, over what period, how the 120,000-tonne shortfall was calculated or by whom, or whether the Ceylon Electricity Board, Lanka Coal Company or the Auditor General has been asked to respond. Ada Derana was unreachable behind a CloudFront block.
