A married couple from Borella has been arrested by the Illegal Assets Investigation Division in connection with long-running drug trafficking operations, with their property and financial assets frozen under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
According to Police, the suspects, aged 32 and 37, were taken into custody in Athurugiriya on May 20. Investigations revealed that since 2017 the pair had channelled drug-trafficking proceeds through the eZ Cash digital payment platform, depositing illicit earnings into bank accounts held under the female suspect’s mother.
Authorities found that the suspects had purchased a six-perch plot of land and a house in Athurugiriya’s Oruwala Shanthalokagama, Koratota, in December 2023 for approximately Rs. 3 million using illegally earned funds. The land and house have been frozen for seven days from May 20, pending further legal action.
The probe also extends to six bank accounts maintained under the names of the suspects and the female suspect’s mother, as well as a luxury car registered to the male suspect. Police said further investigations are under way to trace the full extent of assets linked to the trafficking operation.
The case is the first documented use of the eZ Cash mobile-wallet channel for narcotics-proceeds laundering in this enforcement cycle, alongside the active Rata Ekata anti-narcotics drive under which more than 156,000 arrests have been recorded since October 2025. The PMLA route allows the Division to freeze assets pre-conviction, a mechanism increasingly used to disrupt trafficking networks whose cash flows have moved off bank counters and into digital wallets.
