The Criminal Investigation Department has told the Colombo Fort Magistrate’s Court that its money laundering investigation into MP Namal Rajapaksa and two other suspects is complete, and that Interpol Red Notices have been obtained for the two suspects who are outside the country. Fort Magistrate Pasan Amarasena put the case off to 18 November, NewsFirst reported at 12.52 p.m. on Wednesday.
Investigating officers said steps would be taken to file indictments before a higher court. The case is brought under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act over alleged financial irregularities in SriLankan Airlines’ purchase of Airbus aircraft.
Rajapaksa was brought to court by prison authorities. He was granted bail in this money laundering file on 30 September — cash bail of Rs. 500,000 and two sureties, plus a foreign travel ban — but remains in remand custody in what NewsFirst describes only as a separate case under the Bribery Act. Our record of the Airbus bribery file, which is heard in a different court, has his remand there running to 28 October; no filing on Wednesday named which case is holding him.
Who the “two other suspects” are
NewsFirst does not identify the absent suspects beyond their names and ordinal numbers, and the ordinals it uses only make sense against the fuller account already on the record here.
When the prosecution set out the status of every suspect in this file on 14 September, it accounted for four:
| Suspect | Status given to court |
|---|---|
| Kapila Chandrasena (1st) | Former SriLankan Airlines chief executive; deceased |
| Priyanka Niyomali Wijenayake (2nd) | In Australia, not brought before Sri Lankan authorities |
| Shamindra Rajapaksa (3rd) | In the United States, already under an Interpol Red Notice |
| Namal Rajapaksa (4th) | In remand custody |
That is why Wednesday’s filing counts “two other suspects” while still calling them the second and third: the first suspect died in May, and NewsFirst does not say so. Wijenayake is Chandrasena’s widow; Shamindra Rajapaksa is a son of Chamal Rajapaksa and a former SriLankan Airlines board member. The Daily FT, filing separately on Wednesday, also described Namal Rajapaksa as the fourth suspect in this case.
Only one of the two Red Notices is new
The Red Notices are presented as a single current step. The archive dates them apart.
- 2 April — Chief Magistrate Asanga S. Bodaragama issued open arrest warrants for both Shamindra Rajapaksa and Wijenayake in the Airbus bribery case after each failed to appear.
- 14 September — the prosecution told the court Shamindra Rajapaksa was already the subject of an Interpol Red Notice. It was described again on 19 September, when a Blue Notice was reported against Basil Rajapaksa in an unrelated case. Wijenayake was not said to be under one.
- 30 September — the same Fort Magistrate forfeited Rs. 40 million in bail furnished for Wijenayake by Aravinda de Silva and his wife, and the court was told steps had been taken to refer her warrant to Interpol.
So Shamindra Rajapaksa’s Red Notice is at least a month old. The genuinely new development is Wijenayake’s, roughly two weeks after her warrant was referred. No filing draws the distinction.
It does close a question this desk left open. Our 18 September report recorded that no outlet had said whether extradition or Interpol action had been taken over the two suspects who had gone to Australia and the United States. Both are now covered by Red Notices.
”Complete” is not the new part
Wednesday was the fourth time in a month a court has been told this investigation is finished. The prosecution said extracts had gone to the Attorney General on 14 September; a Deputy Solicitor General said both the bribery and money laundering investigations were closed on 30 September; the Attorney General’s Department said the same in the Chief Magistrate’s Court on 13 October, when it announced it was seeking a consolidated indictment and a three-judge trial-at-bar. The news on Wednesday is the date, not the conclusion.
The 18 November date also sits awkwardly beside that plan. If the Attorney General files one indictment covering both files in the High Court, the Fort Magistrate’s Court may have nothing left to call. The two files have stayed separate because the prosecution argued on 30 September that they arise from separate investigations by two different agencies into the same incident — the CID on money laundering, the Bribery Commission on bribery — making a transfer unnecessary. The alleged bribe at the centre of the matter is Rs. 100 million, the rupee equivalent of US$800,000 said to have been routed through Singapore accounts.
On sourcing
This report rests on a single verified newsroom. The Daily Mirror’s 14 October output and Hiru’s latest-news rail were both checked and carry no filing on this sitting; the Daily FT’s Wednesday story concerns the previous day’s hearing in the other court. Ada Derana published an item headlined “MP Namal Rajapaksa brought before court” on 14 October, but the site has been unreachable from our infrastructure for twenty-six consecutive days and it could not be read or cited.
Not reported
No filing says when the indictments will be served, how many accused they will name, or whether the money laundering file will be folded into the consolidated indictment or proceed on its own. None reports any response from Rajapaksa’s lawyers. Neither Australia nor the United States is reported to have acted on either Red Notice, and no filing gives a date for any extradition step. The 30 September order also gave Wijenayake’s sureties until 14 October — Wednesday — to pay the outstanding Rs. 20 million of the forfeited bail; no account of the day’s sitting says whether that was paid.
