For the second hearing running, the Colombo Chief Magistrate’s Court has released a suspect in the Rs 190 billion illicit-outflow case because the prosecution had not placed enough evidence before it to justify holding him.
Chief Magistrate Asanga S. Bodaragama ordered the seventh suspect released on bail on Thursday, Hiru News reported at 1.23 p.m. The court found that the prosecution had not presented sufficient evidence to justify further remand.
The terms are not light. Bail was set at two personal sureties of Rs 2.5 million each. The suspect must appear at the Financial Crimes Investigation Division every Sunday between 9 a.m. and noon, and the court issued an order barring him from leaving the country.
The first and eighth stay in custody
The first and eighth suspects — produced from prison alongside the seventh — were further remanded until 5 November. The bench directed the FCID to file its bail objections for both by that date, and said it would take up the question of bail for the first suspect at a future sitting.
The case concerns Rs 190 billion allegedly sent out of Sri Lanka under the guise of importing goods. The businessman named in Sinhala-language filings as Jiffry Mohamed is among those before the court; this desk’s earlier coverage rendered the name Jeffrey Mohamed, and Hiru’s English headline slug gives a third spelling, “Geoffrey”. No filing supplies the full legal form.
A pattern across two sittings
What happened on Thursday closely tracks what happened at the last hearing. On 22 October the same magistrate released the sixth suspect on bail on exactly the same ground — that the prosecution had not placed sufficient evidence before the court — and remanded the first, seventh and eighth until today.
At that sitting the FCID had objected to bail for the seventh suspect and filed a progress report on its investigation. A week later, that objection has not held.
The sureties have also hardened between the two. The sixth suspect was freed on Rs 100,000 cash with two sureties of Rs 1 million each; the seventh is out on two personal sureties of Rs 2.5 million each, with reporting conditions and a travel ban the earlier order did not carry.
This is the largest alleged financial crime of the current administration. It sits alongside the separate Customs inquiry into more than 80kg of gold said to have been brought in on money from the same case, and the arrest of four private bank officials in August.
A note on sourcing
Hiru News is the only verified newsroom to have filed on Thursday’s sitting at the time of writing. The Daily Mirror’s breaking-news rail and NewsFirst’s homepage rail were both checked and carried nothing on it, and Ada Derana has been unreachable behind a CloudFront block for 49 days.
Not reported
The filing does not name any of the three suspects beyond their numbering, does not say what evidence the FCID did put before the court, and does not explain why the division’s objection to bail for the seventh suspect failed. It does not say whether the prosecution intends to appeal, nor what has become of the investigation into senior bank management that the court ordered in August.
