-By LeN Financial Correspondent
(Lanka-e-News -15.May.2025, 11.20 PM) In the theatre of post-default Sri Lankan politics, few performances have been more baffling—perhaps even tragicomic—than that of M.U.M. Ali Sabry, the portly President’s Counsel who wandered into the Ministry of Finance like a man who mistook the entrance to the Treasury for the bathroom. That this lawyer-turned-reluctant-economist would end up brokering the most consequential financial agreement of post-independence Sri Lanka with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is either a cruel joke or an indictment of a failed state.
Now, two years after the deal was inked with much fanfare and even more foreign pressure, a growing number of voices—parliamentarians, trade unionists, academics, and even a few unusually sober cab drivers—are asking the question: Did Ali Sabry betray the country?
And perhaps more pointedly: Did he do it for something in return?
Welcome to the political inquisition of Ali Sabry, Sri Lanka’s most accidental finance minister.
Let us begin with credentials, or rather, the conspicuous lack thereof. Ali Sabry was, until recently, better known for his regular television appearances defending the indefensible. A lawyer of modest renown, he was catapulted to prominence as Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s pet legal beagle. How he ended up with the Finance portfolio in the throes of the country’s worst economic crisis since independence is a question the annals of Sri Lankan satire will continue to ponder.
Not only did Sabry have no background in economics, finance, international monetary systems, or even basic household budgeting (judging by his public statements), he had never run so much as a corner shop. And yet there he was, negotiating with the most sophisticated financial technocrats of the IMF—an institution not exactly known for its patience with amateurs or emotional appeals.
“Sending Ali Sabry to deal with the IMF was like sending your astrologer to do your heart surgery,” said one former central banker, only half-joking.
The $2.9 billion IMF Extended Fund Facility (EFF), agreed in 2022 and activated in 2023, came with the usual garnish of “structural reforms,” “fiscal consolidation,” and “revenue-based adjustment”—terms that translate roughly into: life is about to get a lot more expensive for the people, but easier for the creditors.
Utility bills surged. Electricity costs tripled in some brackets. Water tariffs followed. The once-promised social safety net became a threadbare hammock, swinging uneasily over an abyss of inequality.
Worse, under Ali Sabry’s watch, the government agreed to “rationalise”—read: slash—the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) and the Employees’ Trust Fund (ETF) contributions of the working class. It was austerity dressed in technocratic respectability. And as always, the people at the bottom paid the price.
But what really raised eyebrows—beyond the usual budget massacres—was the sudden revelation that Sabry’s team had quietly agreed to absorb tax concessions granted to mega development projects such as the Chinese-run Port City and Indian-backed industrial zones.
In essence: the same government that couldn't subsidise kerosene for poor fisherfolk agreed to cancel tax holidays designed to attract foreign direct investment—arguably the only functioning economic strategy Sri Lanka had left. Why?
Conspiracies are Sri Lanka’s second-most abundant export after tea. But in this case, the whispers have taken on a new edge.
According to a leaked diplomatic cable from a Colombo-based Western embassy (which we were not supposed to see, but you know how things are in Colombo), there is concern that Sabry’s decision-making may have been “compromised by personal or family incentives.”
One particular rumour doing the rounds is that Sabry’s son—until recently a law student struggling to find placement—miraculously secured admission to a prestigious U.S. university shortly after the IMF deal was announced. That he now resides in Virginia, safely away from Sri Lanka’s blackouts, bread queues and budget cuts, has only fuelled the fire.
Of course, correlation is not causation. But in Sri Lanka, the difference has never mattered much.
Also buried deep within the IMF agreement was an obscure clause regarding private creditors, namely entities like Hamilton Reserve Bank—the shadowy investment outfit to whom Sri Lanka owes over $250 million in sovereign bonds.
While the IMF publicly insisted on “comparability of treatment” among all creditors, Sabry’s office appears to have quietly allowed certain Indian debts—amounting to $4 billion—to be excluded from restructuring. The Chinese, to their credit (pun intended), agreed to extend a $7 billion restructuring under the ITOF framework, showing at least a sense of financial dignity.
But what of Hamilton? What of BlackRock? What of the now-forgotten pension funds in Europe that unknowingly lent money to a tropical money pit? Did Sabry give some a better deal than others?
According to independent financial analyst Ruwan D., “There is enough in the public record to justify a full parliamentary or presidential inquiry into who benefited from the way this restructuring was done. The lack of transparency is shocking.”
This brings us to the crescendo of outrage now echoing across political chambers and social media timelines alike: the demand for a Presidential Commission to investigate Ali Sabry’s IMF deal.
Among the questions being asked:
Why was Sabry, a legal novice in financial matters, appointed to such a critical role?
Who advised him?
Were standard tender and oversight mechanisms bypassed during IMF negotiations?
Were there any personal, familial, or political gains made by Sabry or his associates?
Did he act under duress or foreign pressure?
Was there collusion with private bondholders?
The demand is not just political theatre. It reflects a wider public mood: one of exhaustion, disillusionment, and a sense that Sri Lanka’s sovereignty is now mortgaged not just to the IMF, but to the whims of unelected, unqualified men with access to power.
To his credit, Ali Sabry has not gone into hiding. Speaking at a recent economic forum in Colombo, he brushed aside criticism as “cheap politics,” and insisted that the IMF deal was “the best available option under the circumstances.”
“The same people who criticise the agreement today are the ones who left the treasury empty,” he thundered. “Sri Lanka was bankrupt. We had no choice.”
Perhaps. But Sabry’s own financial disclosure statements remain, like his economic theories, vague and unrevealing. And while he has been quick to attribute every crisis to “external shocks,” he has said little about why the IMF deal seemed to favour some creditors more than others—or why Port City investors now face a hostile fiscal environment after years of encouragement.
If it was “the best deal,” one wonders what the worst one might have looked like.
So, did Ali Sabry knowingly betray his country?
The answer depends on what you believe about his intentions.
Some argue he was merely out of his depth—an affable lawyer forced to play central banker in a burning building. If so, the betrayal is one of incompetence, not corruption. A man put in the wrong job at the worst time.
Others suspect personal gain—a university placement here, a U.S. visa there, perhaps a few quiet assurances from global institutions and Western capitals in exchange for playing ball. If so, the betrayal is deliberate and worthy of legal consequence.
And then there are those who believe he was simply a pawn—doing what he was told by the IMF, by the President, by creditors, by geopolitical puppeteers from Beijing to Washington.
Either way, the damage is done.
Beyond Sabry’s personal story lies a larger, more troubling saga: the institutional rot that allowed such a man to wield such disproportionate power.
Where were the technocrats? The economists? The Central Bank? Parliament?
Why did no one stop the madness when it began?
As one senior official (who asked not to be named) confessed, “The reality is: no one wanted to touch the Finance Ministry after Basil [Rajapaksa]. Sabry took it because no one else would. It was a suicide mission, and he volunteered.”
Perhaps. But when you volunteer for national suicide, the least the public expects is that you leave a note.
Sri Lanka has set up commissions for lesser scandals—from VAT scams to cricket match-fixing. Surely, a $2.9 billion IMF agreement that will define the economic trajectory of 22 million people for the next decade deserves at least as much scrutiny.
And if such a commission finds misconduct, negligence, or worse, then consequences must follow—not just for Sabry, but for the culture of nepotism and mediocrity that placed him in that chair to begin with.
Civil rights suspensions, asset seizures, political bans—all must be on the table. Not for vengeance, but for justice. Because if there is no accountability for betrayal—whether by greed or by incompetence—then what remains of the republic?
Ali Sabry may well have signed the IMF deal in good faith, with patriotic intent and a rosary of prayers. But in matters of finance, as in surgery, intent is irrelevant if the operation leaves the patient crippled.
Sri Lanka deserved better. It deserved an economist, a fiscal strategist, a man or woman of foresight and steel nerves—not a lawyer fumbling through spreadsheets while the nation drowned in red ink.
If Sabry did betray the nation, he must be held to account.
If he did not, then those who appointed him must explain themselves.
Because if this is how deals are done, then we have not defaulted just on our debt—but on our duty to govern with wisdom.
-By LeN Financial Corrospondent
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by (2025-05-15 18:41:10)
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