Documents relating to a future French loan repayment have gone missing from the Finance Ministry’s computer systems and may be linked to the same hackers behind the USD 2.5 million Treasury breach, the Sunday Times reported on Sunday in a development that significantly widens the cyber heist probe.
The newspaper, citing investigators, said the missing files concerned a French loan repayment scheduled for the future. Officers fear the hackers extracted the records as preparation for a second fraudulent diversion. A special cyberforensic team from the Criminal Investigation Department is leading the inquiry.
CID officers have taken possession of laptops, mobile phones and SIM cards used by staff of the Finance Ministry’s External Resources Department — the same unit that handled the USD 2.5 million debt repayment diverted from the Australian Export Finance Agency.
“We are looking at the possibility of some inside help that may have been given to an outside party to breach our system,” a senior government official told the Sunday Times.
Deputy Finance Minister Dr Anil Jayantha confirmed to the newspaper that the Treasury’s emails had been compromised and that there was “a clear case of negligence on the part of officials handling the payments.” He said the inquiry was probing “all sides,” including whether there was “a deliberate move” or “a political angle” intended to embarrass the government.
The Deputy Minister said that following the breach, all future foreign loan repayments will require additional approval from the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, and that further security features have been introduced on internal Treasury servers.
The development comes after the CID this week recorded statements from seven officials of the External Resources Department over the original USD 2.5 million theft, with five officials interdicted and the COPF parliamentary committee pursuing the breach as a potential technical default on Sri Lanka’s debt obligations.
Newswire carried the Sunday Times report on Sunday afternoon, attributing it to the newspaper’s investigation.
Sources: Sunday Times, Newswire.
