Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa has demanded the appointment of a Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) to investigate the alleged transfer of US$2.5 million in Treasury funds to a third-party account, arguing that an in-house departmental inquiry cannot deliver the impartiality the case requires.
Premadasa said both the chairmanship and the majority of seats on the proposed committee should be held by the opposition. Without that structure, he warned, the inquiry risked becoming an exercise in “justifying predetermined conclusions” rather than uncovering responsibility for the loss.
The Opposition Leader accused the government of going beyond financial mismanagement and “deliberately concealing the matter from Parliament, the Committee on Public Finance (COPF) and the general public.” Withholding information about the missing funds from the legislature, he said, was itself a serious breach.
Premadasa rejected the government’s current approach of opening an internal departmental inquiry, characterising it as biased and likely to shift responsibility onto individual officials rather than examine systemic and political accountability. Only a transparent, opposition-led PSC, he said, could carry out an independent investigation.
The intervention escalates a now month-long political confrontation over the Treasury cyber fraud, in which hackers exploited an email channel between the External Resources Department and the Australian Export Finance Agency to divert part of a foreign debt repayment. Five Treasury officials have been interdicted, the Criminal Investigation Department has launched its own inquiry, and the Australian High Commission has confirmed it is coordinating with Sri Lankan authorities.
Premadasa had earlier accused the government of running a cover-up by delaying disclosure to Parliament, while businessman and political figure Dilith Jayaweera publicly argued the breach could not be attributed solely to outside hackers. The PSC demand is the first formal opposition move to seize procedural control of the inquiry from the executive.
