Former Power and Energy Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka said on April 20 he will fully disclose all facts relating to coal transactions carried out since 2009, “leaving nothing concealed.”
Speaking as leader of the United Republic Front, Ranawaka said the Auditor General was instructed at the parliamentary committee level to submit a full audit report on coal imports between 2009 and 2016. That report has now been delivered, along with a large volume of supporting documents as attachments, and he intends to release it to the public in its entirety.
The former minister said he will make the audit available to counter what he called “selective extraction of statements and the creation of misleading narratives.” Alongside the Auditor General’s findings, Ranawaka said he will publish Cabinet papers authored by him, letters he sent to successive Presidents, and directives issued to the Ceylon Electricity Board and other institutions during his tenure as Power and Energy Minister.
Ranawaka argued the matter had already been investigated by the Auditor General’s Department and that those findings “must serve as the starting point and foundation for further scrutiny” — pushing back against the new Presidential Commission of Inquiry and the parliamentary process built around it.
The pledge marks a new angle in the coal probe, which has already seen Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody and his Ministry Secretary resign, a former COPE head brief the Presidential Secretary on alleged irregularities and the Joint Opposition allege the coal contractor company was not properly registered. Until now, most public disclosures have come from inquiry bodies and opposition demands — not from ministers who held the portfolio during the period under review.
