Former Foreign Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris has called for the entire National People’s Power (NPP) Cabinet of Ministers to take responsibility for the unfolding coal procurement scandal, declaring it “three times bigger than the Treasury bond scams perpetrated during the Yahapalana time.”
Speaking from the Flower Road office of UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, Prof. Peiris said the resignation of Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody — the first ministerial resignation under the NPP government — has now exposed the broader Cabinet to legal and political consequences.
Jayakody stepped down after the National Audit Office (NAO) submitted its report on the disputed coal contract to Parliament. The NAO findings concluded that Trident Champhar, the Indian company awarded the major coal supply contract, did not have the required statutory registration in place at the time the agreement was signed.
“There was absolutely no ambiguity regarding the allegations directed at the Energy Ministry,” Prof. Peiris said. He warned that a future government would move courts against the entire NPP Cabinet, arguing that collective responsibility cannot be confined to a single resigning minister.
Jayakody had previously been indicted at Colombo High Court over alleged corruption from his earlier tenure during the Yahapalana administration, a fact the Opposition has now folded into its critique of the NPP’s vetting process.
The “three times bigger than the bond fraud” framing is politically significant: the Yahapalana-era Central Bank bond scandal became the defining accountability crisis of that government and shaped subsequent election narratives. Prof. Peiris’s comparison signals that the SJB-UNP-SLPP opposition bloc intends to position the coal procurement issue as the central corruption story of the NPP’s term ahead of the next electoral cycle.
The remarks build on the Opposition’s earlier demand that ministerial resignation alone cannot close the Rs. 8.5 billion coal-procurement question.
