President’s Counsel Maithri Gunaratne has called on Parliament to intervene in the investigation into the wrongful payment of a USD 2.5 million foreign loan instalment from the Treasury to a third party instead of the creditor country, disclosing that five senior officials have been interdicted over the breach.
In a letter to Speaker Dr. Jagath Wickremaratne, copied to leaders of every political party in Parliament, the Committee on Public Finance, the Auditor General and the National Audit Office, Gunaratne said the payments were made between December 2025 and January 31, 2026. He is acting on behalf of the civil society grouping “Free Lawyers”.
An international investigation by a technical committee resulted in the interdiction of two Treasury Directors, two Deputy Treasury Directors and a senior official responsible for IT, according to the letter seen by The Island. Gunaratne argued that payments of that scale could not have been completed without the involvement of the Deputy Secretary to the Treasury and the Treasury Secretary.
Gunaratne said the Central Bank had been responsible for loan payments until recently but the irregularities surfaced only after the function was transferred to the Department of External Resources and the Public Debt Management Office. Free Lawyers noted that Treasury Secretary Harshana Suriyapperuma, who is also Secretary to the Finance Ministry, should be examined under a Parliament-supervised mechanism. Suriyapperuma, a former NPP National List lawmaker, succeeded Mahinda Siriwardena in late June 2025.
Free Lawyers spokesman Keerthi Tennakoon told The Island Parliament should act “swiftly and decisively”, noting the USD 2.5 million disappearance coincided with the Rs. 13.2 billion National Development Bank fraud.
The interdiction figure adds operational detail to earlier disclosures that Cabinet and the Ministry of Finance had initiated disciplinary action. COPF Chair Harsha de Silva has separately raised the question of whether missed creditor payments constitute a technical default on Sri Lanka’s sovereign obligations.
