By Ruwan Weerakoon
(Lanka-e-News -29 Oct 2026,5.00 A.M.) A black BMW left in a Colombo hotel courtyard has ended up in a courtroom, and the man who owns it is a former cabinet minister. Johnston Fernando has told the Colombo Fort Magistrate's Court, through his lawyers, that he pleads guilty to possessing a luxury BMW imported into Sri Lanka without payment of taxes, and to tax evasion.
Before the last presidential election, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) received a tip-off. A black BMW, number plate WP C 24-0430, had been parked suspiciously in the courtyard of a Colombo hotel. The person who left it there told police that it belonged to Fernando and that his driver had brought it to the hotel.
Inside the vehicle, investigators found several documents belonging to the former minister. They found nothing relating to the car's registration. Further inquiries showed that the number plate on the car had been issued to a private company in Nawala.
CID officers recorded a statement from Fernando on October 23 and then arrested him. He was later remanded in custody.
Two official findings made the case harder to defend. Sri Lanka Customs confirmed that no vehicle with the BMW's chassis number had been lawfully imported into the country. The Government Analyst's Department then found the car to be an illegally assembled vehicle.
Police now believe the case extends beyond Sri Lanka. The chassis and engine numbers are reportedly linked to a luxury vehicle manufactured in Germany and sold to a buyer in England. That vehicle was reported stolen in the United Kingdom in 2021.
If the reported link holds, the BMW in Colombo carried the identity of a stolen foreign car. This is the pattern investigators call "cloning", in which a vehicle is given the identifiers of another, legitimately registered one. The chassis number is the usual hook for such a switch because it ties a car to its customs and registration history.
Sentencing has yet to be announced. When cases involving illegally assembled or structurally altered vehicles, or vehicles with tampered chassis or engine identities, reach a Magistrate's Court, the Magistrate has wide discretion. The range depends on the sections under which the prosecution framed the charges.
Under the Motor Traffic Act: regulatory violations commonly carry terms of up to three to six months' imprisonment, often alongside or as an alternative to heavy fines. Serious fraudulent assembly or major document manipulation can attract custodial sentences of up to one year. Repeat offences, or cases involving an assembly syndicate, can raise the maximum prison term or double the fine.
Under the Penal Code: if the offence involves forged revenue licences, faked customs clearance documents, cloned vehicle identities, or tampered chassis numbers, the case moves from traffic regulation into fraud and forgery. Penalties for cheating, forgery, and using forged documents as genuine are considerably heavier. Magistrates can impose rigorous imprisonment ranging from several months to years, depending on the fraud's extent, financial scale, and criminal intent.
A mystery car found at a Colombo hotel near the election, tied to a theft in England, has ended with a former minister's admission of guilt in court.
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by (2026-10-29 01:29:08)
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