Sarvajana Balaya leader and Member of Parliament Dilith Jayaweera has rejected the government’s framing of the USD 2.5 million Treasury fund misdirection as an external cyber attack, saying the incident cannot be attributed to hackers.
Addressing a news conference on Thursday, Jayaweera called on both the Secretary to the Treasury and the relevant subject Minister to resign from their positions so that a fair and impartial investigation can proceed. He said stepping aside was a precondition for any inquiry the public could trust.
The Sarvajana Balaya intervention adds a third opposition voice to those pressing the government on the breach, alongside Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa’s cover-up accusation and the Free Lawyers’ Collective demand for the Finance Secretary’s resignation.
Jayaweera’s “cannot be attributed to hackers” framing is a shift from the official business email compromise account. The government has so far described the loss as a fraudulent redirection of a debt-service payment via a compromised communications channel with the Australian Export Finance Agency. By contrast, the MP’s framing implies the incident may have involved internal failures or insider conduct rather than a purely external intrusion.
The government has stood by its account of the breach, with Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya saying in Kandy on Wednesday that the investigation was underway and five officials interdicted. No Treasury, Finance Ministry or NPP response to Jayaweera’s remarks had been issued by Thursday evening.
