The Committee on Public Finance (COPF) was told on Thursday that ten government debt-repayment transactions totalling USD 2.5 million, intended for a counterparty in Australia, never reached the recipient — the first time the heist quantum and transaction count have been disclosed officially.
COPF Chairman and Opposition MP Dr. Harsha de Silva told reporters after the meeting that the ten transactions were carried out between October 2025 and January 2026, a four-month window during which red flags were repeatedly ignored as approvals continued through multiple reporting layers. Treasury Secretary Harshana Suriyapperuma and senior Finance Ministry officials appeared before the committee, alongside senior Central Bank officials.
According to Dr. de Silva, suspicion first arose in January and Sri Lanka CERT and law enforcement were alerted at that point, but it was only in March that authorities confirmed the full extent of the losses. The Daily FT separately reported that it was Australia, not the Treasury, that flagged the non-payment to Sri Lankan authorities — shifting the issue from a technical lapse to a failure of process and oversight.
The committee identified “serious gaps in processes,” Dr. de Silva said. He told the meeting that the Treasury Secretary was bound by statutory obligations to notify the Financial Intelligence Unit within 48 hours, submit an initial report within seven days, and provide a complete report to the Auditor General and Parliament within three months — and that the Treasury’s “sensitive nature of the matter” excuse for not informing the committee earlier was “not accepted.”
“We were astonished to find the massive gaps in procedure which had been manipulated to commit this crime over four months,” Dr. de Silva said.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is expected to address Parliament next week on the breach, according to the FT — the first signal of direct presidential accountability action on the matter. The Finance Ministry has been given four weeks to submit a full report with supporting evidence; the committee’s next session on the matter will be held at that point. Dr. de Silva warned that if the funds are not recovered, the burden may ultimately fall on taxpayers.
The disclosure is the most concrete account yet of the scale and timeline of the breach that has dominated the parliamentary oversight cycle for two weeks. Suriyapperuma’s decision to attend on Thursday reversed his earlier written refusal, defusing what had threatened to become the first formal non-compliance from the executive branch with parliamentary oversight in the heist accountability cycle.
