Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) MP Namal Rajapaksa has invoked the Public Finance Management Act No. 44 of 2024 in pressing for accountability over the $2.5 million Treasury debt-repayment diversion, rejecting any attempt to frame the incident as a mere “technical error.”
In a post on X on Wednesday, Rajapaksa argued that the Act draws a clear statutory line on responsibility for public funds. Under Sections 4 and 28, he said, the Minister of Finance is responsible for fiscal oversight and the authorisation of expenditure warrants, while under Sections 5, 29 and 36 the Secretary to the Treasury exercises operational control and is tasked with safeguarding computerised public financial systems.
“If warnings were raised and an unsecured system was still used to handle public funds, accountability cannot be separated between policy approval and administrative execution, and both levels must be examined,” Rajapaksa wrote. “This is now a test of consistency and transparency in governance: will the same standards of accountability that are publicly stated be applied equally when a complaint is formally made, and names arise in an investigation?”
The SLPP MP also pointed to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s May 12 statement that if a person’s name arises in an investigation, a statement must be recorded “even from the President himself.” That principle, Rajapaksa said, “must now be applied uniformly, without exception or delay.”
The intervention is the first formal statutory-framework challenge from a senior opposition figure on the diverted Australian Export Finance Agency payment. It follows the Central Bank Governor’s confirmation that all banks have been checked for similar exposures, and the FBI’s involvement in the international probe into the cyber-enabled diversion. Earlier opposition demands had focused on presidential and parliamentary oversight mechanisms and the resignation of the Treasury Secretary.
Source: Newswire.
