Police allege nearly Rs 24 billion was sent overseas disguised as payments for imports. The trail reportedly runs through thousands of transactions, dozens of companies and six banks. The arrest is only the beginning. The bigger question is how the money was allowed to leave.
Sri Lankan investigators are probing what may turn out to be one of the country’s more extraordinary alleged foreign-exchange operations: some US$80 million – approximately Rs 23.7 billion – allegedly transferred out of Sri Lanka under the guise of paying for imported goods.
A 34-year-old businessman from Maradana, described by Police as a cosmetics trader operating from Colombo’s Second Cross Street, has been arrested by the Financial Crimes Investigation Division. He has not been convicted of any offence, and the allegations against him remain to be tested before court.
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But the numbers emerging from the investigation demand attention well beyond the arrest of one businessman.
The investigation reportedly began following a complaint from Sri Lanka Customs concerning companies suspected of sending money abroad after representing that the payments were for imports. Investigators say the transfers under scrutiny took place between January 2023 and November 2025.
According to information attributed to investigators, US$80 million was transferred overseas on 3,198 occasions through six State and private banks. Police have separately said the alleged operation involved 26 companies and 54 bank accounts.
Those figures transform this from an ordinary fraud investigation into a much larger question about Sri Lanka’s financial controls.
Three thousand one hundred and ninety-eight transfers do not happen in an afternoon.
If the Police allegations are correct, each transfer would have generated a banking trail. Import payments ordinarily require documentation. Companies have accounts. Banks have customers. Telegraphic transfers have beneficiaries. Customs has import declarations and records of goods entering the country.
So where were the goods?
If goods corresponding to these alleged payments entered Sri Lanka, investigators should be able to identify them. If they did not, the question becomes how payments ostensibly connected to imports passed through the financial system without the discrepancy being detected earlier.
There is another question.
Where did the US$80 million go?
The destination countries, beneficiary accounts and ultimate recipients have not yet been publicly identified. Establishing them may tell investigators whether this was simply an alleged mechanism for moving foreign exchange abroad or part of something considerably larger.
The period under investigation makes the case particularly striking. These transactions allegedly began in 2023, when Sri Lanka was emerging from its worst foreign-exchange crisis in decades. Dollars were not an abstract accounting entry. The country had experienced shortages of fuel, medicines and essential imports precisely because foreign currency had become desperately scarce.
Against that background, an allegation that approximately US$80 million left the country through purported import transactions deserves scrutiny at every point through which the money travelled.
Sri Lanka Customs has responsibility not merely for collecting revenue but for preventing revenue leakage and fraud and maintaining import and export information. The banking system, meanwhile, operates extensive compliance and transaction-monitoring mechanisms.
The investigation therefore cannot end with the person alleged to have organised the transactions.
If 26 companies were involved, who incorporated or controlled them? If 54 bank accounts were used, who opened them and who operated them? What documentation supported the transfers? Were invoices presented? Were Customs declarations produced? Were the purported overseas suppliers genuine companies?
And if there were 3,198 separate transfers through six banks, at what point should the pattern have become visible?
None of those questions establishes wrongdoing by any bank or its employees. Nor does the movement of money through a bank by itself establish that the institution knew anything improper was occurring. That distinction is important.
But the scale alleged by investigators makes scrutiny of the control system unavoidable.
One report from yesterday’s court proceedings goes further, stating that officials from four private banks have already been remanded in connection with the wider investigation. It also refers to allegations concerning additional front companies and substantially larger transfers connected with another alleged operator. Those claims require careful separation from the specific US$80 million case now before court, but they make the wider investigation potentially much more significant.
The immediate suspect will have his opportunity to answer the allegations against him through the judicial process. That is how it should be.
The public, however, is entitled to another set of answers.
Sri Lanka spent years counting every available dollar. Businesses struggled to obtain foreign exchange. Import restrictions were imposed. Ordinary citizens were told repeatedly that protecting the country’s reserves was a national necessity.
If investigators can establish that nearly Rs 24 billion equivalent nevertheless travelled overseas masquerading as import payments, the story cannot finish with the arrest of the person accused of sending it.
It must establish who received the money, what supposedly came back to Sri Lanka, who checked the paperwork and how 3,198 transactions allegedly passed through the system before somebody finally asked the most obvious question.
Where did US$80 million go?
