Former Board of Investment chairman Thilan Wijesinghe has written to Leader of the House Bimal Rathnayake asking for an investigation into how he came to be named in a list of 50 corruption cases tabled in Parliament — against a High Court case number that two separate legal teams say does not exist.
The request comes after the minister withdrew his name from the list.
What was tabled, and when
Rathnayake, who is also Minister of Transport, Highways and Urban Development, tabled a 10-page document on 8 October to rebut claims that the government was pursuing political revenge, the Daily Mirror reported. It set out corruption, fraud and criminal cases involving former ministers, members of the Rajapaksa family, senior state officials and businessmen.
Wijesinghe appeared as the 50th and final entry, in connection with alleged breaches of anti-corruption legislation in the award of contracts for state development projects outside approved procedures.
Addressing Parliament on 22 October, Rathnayake withdrew three names — Wijesinghe’s, former Kilinochchi District Secretary Rupavathy Ketheeswaran and former ministry additional secretary Jayantha Fernando. He said the three may or may not have held government positions at the relevant time and that their inclusion was not essential to his argument, while maintaining that the cases were not being pursued out of political revenge.
The case number is the substance of the complaint
The list cited case reference HC/9021/2018. Wijesinghe says two independent legal teams inquired with the Registrar of the Colombo High Court and found no case under that number.
In an earlier update on 15 October he said the lawyers were told that only around 800 cases were filed in that court in 2018, and that under its numbering system a case numbered 9,021 could not have been filed that year. On those figures the cited reference is more than eleven times the number of cases the court took in that year — an arithmetic point that does not depend on tracing the file at all.
”Withdrawing a name does not automatically undo those consequences”
Wijesinghe welcomed the withdrawal in a social media post but said the matter does not end there.
“Given my responsibilities on Boards of public companies listed in Sri Lanka and India, allegations of this nature can affect the confidence of regulators, shareholders and business partners,” he said. “Withdrawing a name does not automatically undo those consequences.”
He questioned why information of such seriousness would be put forward without its accuracy first being established, and observed that knowingly supplying false information to a public servant could, in certain circumstances, amount to an offence under the Penal Code.
“A Minister must be able to rely on the information placed before him. I have therefore written to the Minister requesting an investigation into its source and the circumstances in which it was included.”
In his first response on 9 October, Wijesinghe denied the allegation outright. He noted that media reports suggested it related to 2010, a period in which he held no public office and was Group Managing Director of Overseas Realty (Ceylon) PLC, and that no law enforcement agency had sought a statement from him.
Not reported
The filing does not say whether Rathnayake has replied, which agency or official compiled the list, or whether the other two withdrawn names rest on similarly untraceable references. It does not say whether the remaining 47 entries have been checked against court records.
It does not give the Registrar’s response in its own words, name the two legal teams, or say whether Wijesinghe has made any complaint to the police or to the Bribery Commission. Neither Rathnayake nor the Colombo High Court registry is quoted.
Single source. This desk checked the Daily Mirror’s breaking-news listing, the Hiru News homepage rail and the NewsFirst rail directly; no other verified newsroom had filed on Wijesinghe’s request for an investigation at the time of writing. Ada Derana has returned an HTTP 403 block to this desk for some 48 consecutive days and could not be consulted. The underlying document was tabled in Parliament and is a matter of record; the figures above are Wijesinghe’s own account of what his lawyers were told, and this desk has not independently searched the Colombo High Court register.
