The Financial Crime Investigation Division has arrested a 48-year-old man from the Panadura area over the operation of an illegal financial institution, police said.
He was arrested under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and the Banking Act, NewsFirst reported.
The allegations relate to running a pyramid-scheme financial institution, and to earning money from it, promoting it, advertising it and managing it, along with criminal breach of trust against people who invested money.
Those are several distinct heads of allegation rather than one charge, and none has been tested in court.
A separate case from the Negombo arrests
This is not the pyramid-scheme case this desk reported on 4 November, in which two suspects aged 45 and 59, from Thimbirigaskatuwa and Negombo, were arrested over an alleged pyramid financial scheme.
The two share an investigating division and a legal framework but nothing else: different suspects, a different number of them, a different area and a different date. Pyramid-scheme arrests are reported frequently enough in Sri Lanka that the description alone does not identify a case — the location, the count and the ages are what separate them.
Not reported
The filing does not name the suspect or the institution, give the sum of money involved, say how many investors are affected, or state when or where he is to be produced in court. It does not say how long the scheme is alleged to have operated, or whether anyone else is under investigation.
A note on sourcing: no other verified newsroom had filed on this arrest at the time of writing. Searches returned other pyramid-scheme cases — the Negombo arrests above, the OnmaxDT directors, and an unrelated couple detained at the airport — none of which is this one.
