By Ruwan Weerakoon
(Lanka-e-News -2026.July.26, 10.50 PM) Sri Lanka has sent a joint CID–CIABOC team to Australia in the latest move of its expanding anti-corruption push, with investigators seeking evidence tied to several major financial crime cases involving former political figures, senior officials, and relatives of top leaders.
The mission's focus is the long-scrutinised 2013 SriLankan Airlines aircraft deal. Investigators want evidence on claims that former airline CEO Kapila Chandrasena, his wife Priyanka Niomali Wijenayake, and businessman Shamindra Rajapaksa took a US$2 million bribe from a European plane maker in connection with the purchase of ten aircraft. They also plan to take a statement from W.D. Nimal Perera, said to hold the Australian bank account used to funnel the alleged payments, evidence authorities hope will support future Interpol action and other cross-border legal steps.
This is not an isolated trip. Sri Lankan police have made several such journeys abroad since the current government stepped up its corruption crackdown, gathering financial records, tracing assets, and seeking judicial cooperation in cases touching former ministers and politically connected businessmen.
Backers of the strategy say financial crimes by the powerful rarely remain within a single country's borders, so international legwork is necessary to trace funds and build prosecutable cases. But the opposition disputes this framing, accusing the government of going after rivals while sparing allies — and questioning whether the timing of some probes lines up too neatly with politically charged moments.
Civil society is split too. Many support the renewed push against grand corruption, but others warn that headline-grabbing inquiries mean little without convictions. That repeated multi-agency missions abroad carry a real cost to taxpayers if they don't eventually produce results in court.
The Australian probe will be a test case either way: solid evidence leading to real prosecutions would bolster the government's anti-corruption credibility, while a stalled or fruitless outcome would feed claims that this is political theatre rather than genuine reform, making transparency and institutional independence the deciding factors for how the broader campaign is judged.
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by (2026-07-27 18:49:34)
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