Member of Parliament Namal Rajapaksa is due before the Colombo Chief Magistrate’s Court at 9.30 a.m. on Friday as the bribery case against him is called again, NewsFirst reported.
The Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna national organiser has been in remand custody since 4 September, when the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) arrested him after he appeared at the Commission to give a statement on the Airbus aircraft procurement. Colombo Chief Magistrate Asanga Bodaragama remanded him until 18 September — which is why the case returns today.
A new figure on the alleged chain
Hiru News reports a breakdown investigators have not previously been reported as setting out in full.
More than €1.4 million was allegedly paid as a bribe into a Singaporean bank account. Of that sum, US$800,000 was allegedly transferred to a company owned by a Sri Lankan businessman, who is accused of then channelling Rs. 100 million to Rajapaksa.
The Rs. 100 million and US$800,000 figures are already on the court record: Deputy Solicitor General Janaka Bandara gave them to the Chief Magistrate’s Court on 4 September, and Deputy Minister Ruwan Senarath repeated the Rs. 100 million figure on 7 September. The €1.4 million is the new element — and it places the alleged Singapore payment a step further up the chain than the sum said to have reached Rajapaksa himself.
One caution on the arithmetic. The Singapore transfers in this file are dated 2014, when the rupee traded near Rs. 130 to the dollar — which is what makes Rs. 100 million and US$800,000 equivalent. At today’s rate the same US$800,000 would be roughly Rs. 264 million. The figures are not being restated at current rates.
Two proceedings, two courts, two dates
The distinction between the cases against Rajapaksa continues to be blurred in the reporting, and it matters.
The matter called today is the CIABOC bribery case, before the Colombo Chief Magistrate. Separately, the Criminal Investigation Department is running a money laundering investigation into alleged financial irregularities in the acquisition of aircraft for SriLankan Airlines. In that case the Colombo Fort Magistrate has remanded him until 23 September.
NewsFirst reports that Rajapaksa was named a suspect in the money laundering case on the 13th, on the advice of the Attorney General. That date remains unsettled across the reporting: the Daily Mirror has previously put the step at 11 September, NewsFirst’s own contemporaneous filing on 14 September said the magistrate made the order “today”, and the 13th was a Sunday. The discrepancy may reflect outlets dating the Attorney General’s instruction rather than the court’s order — two events the coverage has not distinguished.
Not reported
Neither outlet says what is expected to happen at today’s hearing — whether a further remand, a bail application or the filing of charges — or names the businessman said to have received the US$800,000 and passed on Rs. 100 million.
Neither gives the source of the €1.4 million figure or says whether it was stated in court, and neither says what the balance of that sum, beyond the US$800,000, is alleged to have funded. Nor does either report say whether the two proceedings will be consolidated.
