Colombo Chief Magistrate Asanga S. Bodaragama adjourned corruption cases against two former ministers to January on Tuesday, in hearings twenty minutes apart.

Both men appeared in court on bail, and in both the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption presented its submissions before the magistrate made his order, Hiru News reported.

Akila Viraj Kariyawasam — adjourned to 5 January

The case against the former minister and an employee of his fuel filling station was put off to 5 January. The magistrate additionally ordered CIABOC to submit a further report on the incident to the court on that date.

The allegation concerns Kariyawasam’s period as an advisor to former President Ranil Wickremesinghe. CIABOC says four staff were recruited on the basis that they were for his advisory staff; that three of them were instead put to work at a fuel station he owns, and a fourth was never deployed on the office duties allocated to the post. The state paid those employees Rs. 2,768,836.14 in salaries and allowances, which CIABOC says constituted a loss to the government and the offence of corruption.

That figure matches the one on this desk’s record from August, confirming this is the same case. Kariyawasam was arrested and remanded on 5 August; the fuel station worker was remanded on 12 August; and Kariyawasam was granted bail subject to a travel ban on 18 August. Tuesday’s hearing is the first this desk has recorded since.

Prasanna Ranatunga — adjourned to 26 January

The case against the former Tourism and Aviation Minister was put off to 26 January.

CIABOC alleges that an undue advantage was conferred on a broker company in the course of obtaining medical insurance cover from the Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation for employees of four institutions, among them the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority, which falls under the Tourism Ministry. The Corporation is said to have lost Rs. 4,750,828.72 as a result.

Who lost the money

Hiru’s headline states the loss was “Rs. 4.7 million to the government”. Its own body text says the loss was sustained by Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation. Those are not the same thing: the Corporation is a commercial insurer, and a loss to it is not automatically a loss to the Treasury. The figure is identical in both, so this is a question of who the injured party is, not of how much. This desk follows the body text.

Not the Rs. 25 million case

Ranatunga appears in this archive in a different matter. In April he settled a corruption case with a Rs. 25 million fine, over an allegation that Rs. 64 million was solicited from a businessman in connection with land approvals. That is a separate case with a different complainant, a different sum and a different factual basis. It is recorded here explicitly as unconnected, because a search of this archive for his name returns it.

Why they were heard together

Nothing links the two cases beyond the forum. Both are CIABOC prosecutions of former ministers before the Colombo Chief Magistrate, which is where such cases go, and both were listed for the same morning. Kariyawasam sat in a United National Party government; Ranatunga held office under the Rajapaksas. The adjournments run to different January dates.

What the pairing does show is the pace: both cases are being pushed roughly eleven weeks down the calendar, into a new year, at a stage where CIABOC is still being asked to file further reports.

Not reported

Neither filing says why either case was postponed, whether the defence or the commission sought the adjournment, or what was argued. Neither names the employee charged alongside Kariyawasam, the broker company in the Ranatunga case, or the three institutions besides the Tourism Development Authority.

Neither says whether charges have been formally framed in either case, whether either man has pleaded, or what bail conditions now apply. Neither reports any comment from the accused or their counsel.

Both sources here are filings by the same newsroom, so this report carries no cross-outlet corroboration. This desk could not find a second verified newsroom covering either hearing at the time of writing; Ada Derana could not be fetched, its CloudFront block on this host being in its thirty-second day.