Corruption scandals and blunders of successive governments have bled the state coffers for decades. The Treasury has lost USD 2.5 million again owing to a compromised payment process, and its bigwigs and their political masters are all out to muddy the water. The Opposition is out for their scalps. It never rains but it pours. Scandals have been cropping up in quick succession under the current dispensation.

The JVP-NPP government is in the same predicament as a cantankerous, all-knowing backseat driver suddenly thrust behind the wheel on a treacherous road. Having talked the talk, it now has to walk the walk. Less than two years into office, it has many problems to contend with. The last few weeks have been particularly bad. It must be a fate worse than death for the JVP/NPP leaders, who came to power, condemning previous governments and promising good governance, to be accused of corruption by their political opponents who are known to be utterly corrupt.

The government was reeling from a coal procurement scam that led to the resignation of Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody and Energy Ministry Secretary Udayanga Hemapala, when an NPP propaganda stunt, aimed at boosting the images of the President and the Prime Minister as simple leaders, backfired, with a minister’s palatial house and unexplained assets coming to light. It has now been revealed that the JVP leaders who claimed that their lot was no better than that of the ordinary people are politicians of substantial means. Then, HSBC CEO Georges Elhedery dropped a bombshell. He revealed that Sri Lanka had paid the highest premium for oil in the world, recently. The government had to admit that it purchased diesel at USD 286 a barrel, to replenish stocks, thereby admitting, albeit unwittingly, that the substandard coal imports had led to a shortfall in electricity generation at Norochcholai, and diesel had to be imported at exorbitant prices to keep oil-fired power plants running to prevent power cuts. Now, it is under fire over the transfer of USD 2.5 million from the Treasury to a fake account.

The government has attributed the misdirected Treasury payment to a hacking scheme. But cyber security experts have dismissed this claim as a tall tale. The diversion at issue could not be a simple “hack” and it was rather a case of a compromised payment process, where weak verification layers, email-based instructions, and insufficient system segregation left room for fraud, a fintech expert has told The Island. The government has a penchant for obfuscating issues, but in doing so it only makes matters worse for itself. There is no way it can justify the inordinate delay in reporting the Treasury fraud to the police.

Treasury Chief Dr. Harshana Suriyapperuma has claimed that the government kept the payment scandal under wraps lest the hackers should cover their tracks. The government seems to have a very low opinion of the intelligence of the public. Cyber criminals wipe out all traces of their illegal operations immediately after committing an offence, as is public knowledge. The government should have called in the CID immediately after realising that a misdirected payment had been made and maintained transparency in investigations. Instead, it ordered an internal inquiry. It is only natural that pressure is mounting on the Treasury Chief to step down. Fund transfers go through a layered authorisation process at the Treasury, and a few junior officials must not be scapegoated for the loss at issue. All senior officials who authorised the misdirected payment must be brought to book.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who is also the Minister of Finance, claims to have information about all illegal transactions carried out by his predecessors, but he could not prevent a fraud in the Treasury under him.

It is doubtful that the government has taken cyber security seriously. It seems to think the task of preventing cybercrimes is as easy as carrying out social media attacks on its political opponents. The Opposition claims that the Treasury has suffered a huge loss because the officials who handled the fund transfers are not experienced and competent enough to perform such tasks. This allegation must not go uninvestigated. It is imperative that Parliament conduct a special probe into the Treasury fraud, and open it to the media. The public has a right to know what happened to their money, how the fraud happened, who is actually responsible, and what action will be taken to ensure the safety of state funds. It is hoped that President Anura Kumara Dissanayake will not appoint a presidential commission to investigate all misdirected payments by state institutions since Independence.

Saturday 25th April, 2026

Another scandal has come to light and made international headlines. The illegal diversion of Treasury funds amounting to USD 2.5 million, meant for bilateral debt repayment to Australia, to a third party, could not have come at a worse time. It has happened close on the heels of the launch of the National QR Payment Adoption Programme to transform Sri Lanka into a cash-lite economy. Although the two payment systems are vastly different, and risks are much lower where the QR-based payment is concerned, the fraudulent diversion of Treasury funds is likely to erode public confidence in online fund transfers, if posts being shared via social media are any indication. The digital payment scheme is the way forward for the country, and it behoves the government to take action to clear doubts being created in the minds of the public. A misinformation campaign is already underway, and it needs to be countered.

Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa has accused government politicians of making contradictory statements about the theft of Treasury funds. As he has rightly pointed out, it is clear from their claims that the government is still at sea, and instead of getting to the bottom of the fraud, it is trying to manage the political fallout from the incident. Some of them have even gone to the extent of bashing the Opposition. They ought to study the issue properly and speak with one voice. One need not be surprised even if the government propagandists concoct a conspiracy theory that the political rivals of the JVP/NPP masterminded the diversion of Treasury funds.

What one gathers from the government politicians’ different claims is that cyber criminals gained unauthorised access to the computer system of the External Resources Department (ERD) within the Finance Ministry through emails. They altered payment instructions, redirecting the funds to unauthorised accounts. There has been no system level hacking, according to cyber security experts. It defies comprehension why the ERD officials have not been trained to handle situations of this nature, which are not uncommon in the digital space. Even ordinary people double-check account details before transferring funds. A telephone call to the Australian creditor that was to receive funds from the Sri Lanka Treasury would have helped save USD 2.5 million.

The Opposition politicians are no better. They are also making various claims that are contradictory, and some of them have betrayed their ignorance of the issue. Most of them do not seem to know the difference between the functions of the Treasury and those of the Central Bank. They are only making the public even more confused by expressing opinions and making allegations to gain political mileage. Among them are lawmakers. They ought to be educated on the duties and functions of the Finance Ministry/Treasury and the Central Bank. What they will come out with in case of a parliamentary debate being held on the Treasury payment scam is anyone’s guess.

What needs to be done now is to ensure that the illegal fund diversion is probed thoroughly and the stolen money recovered forthwith while action is taken to prevent the repetition of such incidents. Political battles will not serve the country’s interests.

Friday 24th April, 2026

The Opposition is intensely resentful that the government has thwarted its attempt to have President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who is also Minister of Finance, summoned before the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) probing the green-channelling of 323 red-flagged freight containers in the Colombo Port in January 2025. When the Opposition members of the PSC proposed that President Dissanayake be summoned, their government counterparts put the proposal to a vote and defeated it.

The Opposition’s abortive bid was not devoid of politics, but Sri Lanka Customs, which released the aforementioned containers without mandatory inspections, is under the Finance Ministry. Therefore, the Finance Minister is accountable to Parliament and must answer questions from the container PSC, as it were.

The dispute between the government and the Opposition over the container scandal has more to it than a mere political argy-bargy. It reflects a deeper constitutional issue. The Constitution requires the President to attend Parliament, but frequent politically strategic interventions by him or her dilutes the spirit of the separation of powers and strengthens the Executive’s dominance over the legislature. This practice is bad for the wellbeing of democracy. The President has used, if not misused, Articles 32 and 33 of the Constitution to dominate Parliament in this manner over the years.

The JVP, on a campaign for abolishing the Executive Presidency, played a pivotal role in introducing the 17th, 19th and 21st Amendments to the Constitution to reduce the executive powers of the President, but ensconced in power, it is now silent on its pledge to restore a parliamentary system of government.

The Opposition has claimed that President Maithripala Sirisena testified before the PSC which probed the Easter Sunday terror attacks in 2019, and therefore President Dissanayake ought to do likewise. What it has left unsaid is that President Sirisena made a statement at the 20th meeting of that PSC, held at the Presidential Secretariat, on 20 September 2019. The PSC report has referred to the event as a ‘discussion’. Sirisena, who secured the executive presidency, promising to reduce the powers vested therein, should have refrained from undermining the legislature and visited the Parliament complex to testify before the PSC, as the Minister of Defence.

The least President Dissanayake can do to avoid the public perception that he, too, is undermining the legislature is to follow the precedent created by President Sirisena. Ideally, he ought to appear before the PSC in the parliamentary complex in keeping with his government’s much-touted commitment to upholding accountability and the separation of powers. After all, when the question of summoning President Sirisena before the PSC on the Easter Sunday attacks came up, the then JVP MP Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa, who was also a PSC member, defended the rights of Parliament. He declared that the PSC had the authority to summon anyone for questioning.

Now that the government members of the container PSC have gone out of their way to defend President Dissanayake, the question is whether they can be expected to allow an impartial investigation to be conducted and help uncover anything detrimental to the interests of the President and the ruling coalition.

By scuttling the Opposition PSC members’ effort to have President Dissanayake testify before the container PSC, and undermining the legislature in the process, the JVP-NPP government has unwittingly reminded the public of its unfulfilled election pledge to introduce a new Constitution, inter alia, “abolishing the executive presidency and appointing a president without executive powers by the parliament” (A Thriving Nation: A Beautiful Life, NPP Election Manifesto, p. 109).