The Criminal Investigation Department and the Department of Posts have launched a parallel investigation into a missing payment of US$625,000 remitted from Sri Lanka to the United States Postal Service, Cabinet spokesman Minister Nalinda Jayatissa told reporters on Tuesday.
US authorities filed a complaint with their Sri Lankan counterparts after the funds failed to reach the US Postal Service despite Sri Lanka Post confirming the remittance. Initial findings indicate the missing transfers occurred on two separate occasions.
“Sri Lanka has made the payment, but the US Postal Service has informed us that it has not received the funds,” Jayatissa said.
The minister said the probe was opened several weeks ago and noted that other state-level investigations into alleged malpractice were running in parallel. He declined to comment on whether the postal-service incident was linked to other ongoing financial inquiries.
The case adds to a string of governance accountability incidents under public scrutiny. It follows the Treasury cyber heist, in which $2.5 million in foreign sovereign debt servicing was misdirected through fraudulent emails impersonating an Australian creditor, and a separate forensic audit at NDB Bank over a multi-billion-rupee fraud.
Although Jayatissa stopped short of connecting the postal probe to the Treasury heist, the recurrence of cross-border payment failures in different government entities has intensified opposition demands for a coordinated review of the state’s payment systems and counterparty controls.
The probe escalated on May 6, when Colombo Fort Magistrate Pasan Amaraseena granted permission for the Sri Lanka Computer Emergency Response Team (SL-CERT) to carry out an on-site inspection at the Department of Posts. Presenting an update before the court, the CID said that under global postal transaction procedures, official email accounts for international dealings are provided through the Universal Postal Union (UPU). However, investigators told the court that the disputed payments — now placed at USD 626,555 and reportedly credited to a third party — had been made via an email account outside that established UPU framework, with funds transferred on two separate occasions through that external channel. The CID requested SL-CERT inspection authority, which the Magistrate granted.
Sources: EconomyNext, Newswire, NewsFirst.
