Former minister Patali Champika Ranawaka said on Tuesday that he will make disclosures on 12 November about what he called fraudulent dealings in coal purchases involving President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and two ministers. He produced no documents, and named no specific transaction.
Ranawaka made the claim at a media briefing, the Daily Mirror reported at 2.58 p.m. Colombo time.
Everything that follows is an allegation by a named political opponent. No evidence has been presented, no investigation has been reported, and no court or investigative body has made any finding. None of the three people named has responded in the filing, and this desk has seen no response from any of them.
What he alleged
Ranawaka said the dealings involve the President and two ministers, whom he named as Kumara Jayakody and Anura Karunatilaka. He said he would also address a campaign he is conducting with several journalists and YouTubers.
He gave one line of substance about what the 12 November disclosure will contain:
“I will reveal the connections these persons in the government have with some foreign sources.”
That is the extent of the detail in the filing. The report does not say which coal purchases are meant, over what period, through which entity, or what the alleged fraud consists of. It does not say what documents, if any, Ranawaka holds, or why he is waiting until 12 November to produce them.
Who the people named are
Anura Kumara Dissanayake is the President of Sri Lanka, elected in September 2024.
Anura Karunatilaka holds the energy portfolio and has been the government’s principal public voice on power and fuel through this year — on the 17 October islandwide outage, on the cost of the generation mix, and on the renewable target, where he told AFP this month that Sri Lanka could reach 90 to 95 per cent renewable energy in 10 to 15 years. Coal purchasing falls within his area of responsibility, which is presumably why he is named.
The filing gives no portfolio for Kumara Jayakody and this desk has not established one.
Ranawaka’s record on this kind of claim
A promised future disclosure is a recurring device in this politician’s public work, and the archive allows readers to judge the pattern rather than take it on trust.
- On 3 October he demanded the government publish the fuel pricing formula, a documentary demand on the same energy brief.
- On 20 October he claimed the government had granted 285 presidential pardons.
- On 22 October he was himself the subject of a complaint concerning witness expenses in a case involving him.
This desk takes no position on whether the 12 November disclosure will be substantiated. It records that the claim is unsupported as made, and that a date has been attached to it — which means it can be checked.
Coal procurement as a subject
Coal buying for the Norochcholai power station has been a recurring source of public controversy across successive governments, and tender processes for it have drawn audit scrutiny before. This month a separate figure, Wasantha Samarasinghe, publicly described a coal audit finding as unacceptable — a different matter from Ranawaka’s allegation, involving different people, and the two should not be run together.
Nothing in the Daily Mirror’s filing connects Ranawaka’s claim to any specific tender, audit or inquiry.
Not reported
The filing does not report any response from the President’s office, from either minister named, or from the governing National People’s Power. It does not say whether Ranawaka has made any complaint to the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption, to the police, or to any other body, or whether he intends to.
It does not say where the 12 November disclosure will be made, whether it will be in Parliament — where parliamentary privilege would attach — or at a press conference, where it would not. It does not name the journalists and YouTubers he says he is working with, or explain what the campaign involves.
It gives no indication that any investigation into coal purchases is currently open.
On sourcing: this report rests on a single verified newsroom. A check of the NewsFirst and Hiru News homepage rails and of EconomyNext’s Tuesday output on Tuesday evening found no other filing on the briefing. Ada Derana has returned a CloudFront block to this desk for 45 consecutive days and could not be checked. Given that the claim names a sitting head of state and is uncorroborated and undocumented, readers should treat it as a political statement, not as a reported finding of fact.