A 49-year-old woman has been arrested over more than Rs 70 million in transactions through bank accounts allegedly credited by people linked to organised crime and drug trafficking.
She was detained on Thursday by the Illegal Assets Investigation Unit and is a resident of the Madapatha area, Hiru News reported. She was due to be produced before the Colombo Chief Magistrate’s Court on Friday.
How the accounts were found
The arrest came out of a longer investigation under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act into five suspects, among them a member of an organised crime gang and a drug trafficker.
During that investigation, officers identified four bank accounts at two private banks in the Piliyandala area, held by the sister of one of the suspects. More than Rs 70 million in transactions had passed through them.
The unit found that the money paid into the accounts came from people facing allegations of drug trafficking and organised crime, and arrested the woman on Thursday. Investigations continue.
A note on the relationship
Hiru’s English headline describes the woman as the sister of a drug trafficker. Its own Sinhala text is narrower: it says the accounts were held by the sister of one of the suspects, and the five suspects include both a drug trafficker and an alleged gang member.
The body does not say which of the five she is related to. This article follows the body rather than the headline, and the specific relationship is not asserted here.
Not reported
The filing does not name the woman or any of the five suspects, identify the two banks, give the period over which the transactions took place, or say what she is alleged to have done with the money beyond holding the accounts. No charge is stated, and no defence response is reported.
A note on sourcing: Ada Derana also reported this arrest, with the same figures, area and account details. Its pages return an access block to this desk and the filing could not be fetched or date-verified, so it is not cited as a source — but it is an independent account consistent with the above, including on the relationship being to one of the suspects rather than specifically to the trafficker.