The Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption has arrested a former Commissioner (Investigations) of the Department of Land Title Settlement over state-owned land in Borella valued at about Rs. 1.586 billion.
Nishantha Mohan Wickramasinghe was arrested by CIABOC investigating officers at around 9.45 am on Tuesday, Newswire reported. He is to be produced before the Colombo Chief Magistrate’s Court.
The allegation
The commission alleges that Wickramasinghe abused his official position while serving as Commissioner (Investigations) to facilitate the unlawful transfer of state property, the Daily Mirror reported.
Specifically, CIABOC says he used official departmental letterhead to prepare and issue an unauthorised investigation report under an irregular investigation number. That report allegedly recorded a 1.0982-hectare plot of state-owned land at Assessment No. 30, Elliot Place, Borella as belonging to a private party.
The commission says the conduct caused a significant financial loss to the state while conferring an unlawful benefit on a private party, and has classified it as an offence of corruption under the relevant legislation.
Why the mechanism matters
The alleged method is narrower than most land-fraud cases, and more serious for it. The Department of Land Title Settlement exists to determine who owns what: its investigation reports are the instrument by which the state records title. An investigation report issued on departmental letterhead carries the department’s authority whether or not the investigation behind it was ever authorised.
CIABOC’s case is that the paperwork was procedurally fabricated — an irregular investigation number, rather than a contested valuation or a disputed boundary. On that account the document would have functioned exactly as a genuine one until the number was checked.
Roughly a hectare in Borella, a dense inner suburb of Colombo, accounts for the Rs. 1.586 billion figure.
Not reported
Neither outlet names the private party said to have benefited, gives the date of the report or the period Wickramasinghe held the post, or says whether the title has since been corrected or the land recovered. Neither carries a response from him or from the department. No outlet reports whether anyone else is under investigation.
A name-similarity caution: this is not Anthoney Nishantha Wickramasinghe, the former SriLankan Airlines chairman separately arrested by CIABOC in an unrelated matter. The two cases share neither a subject nor a suspect.
The arrest comes on a day when CIABOC was also before the same court in the Krrish bribery case against MP Namal Rajapaksa, and as a former NTC chairman it charged this month was released on bail.