Colombo court remands Namal Rajapaksa until 18 September in Airbus probe

Colombo Chief Magistrate Asanga S. Bodaragama remanded Namal Rajapaksa until 18 September after the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption arrested him on Friday afternoon. The 40-year-old SLPP national organiser and member of parliament had spent more than five hours answering questions about the 2013 SriLankan Airlines order for Airbus jets.

CIABOC officers took him into custody at about 2:09 p.m. and produced him later the same day. Deputy Solicitor General Janaka Bandara appeared for the commission. Rajapaksa's lawyers were in court. He has denied wrongdoing in earlier statements on the same file.

Prosecutors told the magistrate the arrest rested on an affidavit from businessman Nimal Perera, now living in Australia. Perera alleged that money received by his company from a Singapore account was converted into rupees and handed to Rajapaksa in several instalments during 2014 and 2015. The rupee total put to the court was about Rs 100 million. Investigators recorded Perera's statement in Australia. He has declined to return to Sri Lanka, citing threats to his life.

CIABOC's public account of the money trail is more specific than most earlier briefings on this case. The commission says €1,454,651.24 reached a Standard Chartered Bank account in Singapore held in the name of BIZ Solutions INC. Of that sum, it says, US$800,000 moved to an OCBC Bank account in Singapore held by Sabre Vision Holdings LTD, a company linked to a Sri Lankan businessman. The rupee payments to Rajapaksa, on the commission's case, correspond to those transfers.

The underlying aircraft order dates to 2013, when SriLankan Airlines planned six Airbus A330s and eight A350s. Later governments cancelled the package. The headline figure attached to the cancelled deal in later reporting is about US$2.3 billion. Airbus has already settled a separate, much larger bribery case with French, British and US authorities in 2020 and paid a fine of about US$4 billion covering jet sales in several countries. That settlement did not close national inquiries in Sri Lanka.

Airbus staff have been in Colombo to help. A delegation from the manufacturer visited in the first week of August and, according to submissions on Friday, senior company officials have given four statements across three visits. CIABOC also told the court it has used help from authorities in Australia, Singapore, France and the United States and that the inquiry is in its late stages.

The same wider file already names other suspects. Earlier proceedings before the Fort Magistrate's Court concern former SriLankan Airlines chief executive Kapila Chandrasena and his wife, Priyanka Niyomali Wijenayake, over an alleged US$2 million payment tied to the same purchase. Open warrants have been issued for Wijenayake and for Shamindra Rajapaksa, listed as a third suspect in that branch of the case. Mahinda Rajapaksa, Namal's father and a former president and prime minister, was questioned by CIABOC in May over claims that he received kickbacks. The family has called the allegations politically driven.

Namal Rajapaksa entered parliament for Hambantota in 2010, served as minister of youth and sports from 2020 to 2022, and now sits as a national-list MP. He is the public face of the SLPP after the family's loss of national office in 2022. An arrest of this kind, on a file that also touches his father, changes the legal pressure on that party ahead of any future national contest.

The remand order runs for two weeks. Nothing in Friday's hearing required a plea on the full merits. What the court accepted, for now, is that CIABOC had enough material to hold him while it finishes the international paper trail. The next listed date is 18 September.

Two facts will matter on that date. One is whether Perera stays in Australia or gives evidence that can be tested in Colombo. The other is how much of the Singapore banking record Airbus and the foreign agencies are prepared to put on the court file. The commission has already shown the magistrate the outline of the euro and dollar transfers. The defence will have two weeks to attack that outline.