Namal Rajapaksa Remanded Until Sept. 18 Over An Alleged Rs 100 Million Airbus Bribe
The Supreme Court finished hearing 15 challenges to the government's anti-corruption bill in the same week. His first corruption case, from 2016, reaches trial in November.
Namal Rajapaksa, national organiser of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna and a member of parliament, was remanded until Sept. 18 by Colombo Chief Magistrate Asanga S. Bodaragama after being arrested by the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption.
He had been summoned to appear at the commission at 9 a.m. on Friday, having asked without success to attend a day earlier. He gave statements for close to five hours and was arrested by CIABOC investigating officers at about 2.09 p.m.
The remand order followed submissions from Deputy Solicitor General Janaka Bandara for the commission and from lawyers representing Rajapaksa.
What the commission alleges
The investigation concerns the purchase of a wide-body Airbus fleet for SriLankan Airlines.
CIABOC alleges that €1,454,651.24 was received as bribe money into an account held under the name BIZ Solutions INC at Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore. Of that, it says, US$800,000 was transferred to an OCBC Bank account in Singapore held by Sabre Vision Holdings Ltd, a company owned by a Sri Lankan businessman.
Corresponding to those funds, the commission alleges, Rajapaksa received a total of Rs 100 million from a Sri Lankan businessman on several occasions during 2014 and 2015.
CIABOC says the investigation rests on a statement from that businessman, statements given to the commission by officials of Airbus in France, and documents and other material gathered during the inquiry.
These are allegations. Rajapaksa has not been convicted of any offence in this matter. He has been remanded pending further proceedings, which is a custodial order rather than a finding, and he is represented by counsel.
The law itself is in court
The arrest lands in an unusual week.
The Supreme Court has concluded hearing 15 petitions challenging the constitutionality of the Anti-Corruption (Amendment) Bill placed before parliament by the government, before a three-member bench.
So the state's anti-corruption machinery detained the most prominent member of the former governing family in the same days that the country's highest court was weighing whether the government's expansion of anti-corruption law is constitutional.
The two are formally unconnected. CIABOC's powers derive from existing law, not from the bill under challenge. But they are the same argument approached from two directions, and how the court rules will shape what the commission can do next.
Four arrests, and one trial in ten years
The more revealing context is the record.
Friday's detention is, by one count, the fourth distinct arrest involving Rajapaksa in a decade. He was first arrested in July 2016 by the police Financial Crimes Investigation Division over allegations concerning Rs 70 million provided by the Krrish Group as sponsorship for a rugby tournament, which police alleged had been misappropriated. He was remanded and later released on bail.
That case is still before the courts. The Attorney General filed indictments, and in July this year the Colombo High Court fixed it for trial on Nov. 16, 2026 — a decade after the arrest.
A further remand followed in August 2016 over an allegation involving Rs 45 million said to have been laundered through two of his companies. In October 2017 he was arrested by Hambantota police alongside other MPs over a protest against plans involving Hambantota Port and Mattala airport; that case was still proceeding in the Hambantota Magistrate's Court as recently as January.
Sri Lanka, in other words, arrests senior political figures with some regularity. Bringing those cases to conclusion has proved considerably harder.
Not an isolated prosecution
The commission and the police have been active against former officeholders more broadly.
Former president Ranil Wickremesinghe was arrested in August 2025 by the Criminal Investigation Department over alleged misuse of state funds in connection with a 2023 visit to the United Kingdom, becoming the first executive president of Sri Lanka to be arrested and remanded on corruption charges. Former state minister Shasheendra Rajapaksa has been arrested by CIABOC over a compensation claim. Former minister Keheliya Rambukwella and his son, the former cricketer Ramith Rambukwella, have both been remanded in a case linked to the father.
Whether that represents a functioning accountability process or a pattern with a political dimension is contested in Sri Lanka, and this article does not attempt to settle it.
What to watch
Whether bail is granted before Sept. 18, and what happens on that date. Remand orders are routinely extended. The first substantive test is whether indictments follow and how quickly.
The Supreme Court's determination on the Anti-Corruption (Amendment) Bill. Fifteen petitions have been heard. The ruling will determine what powers the commission operates with going forward, and it is due imminently.
Nov. 16. The Krrish trial date is the clearest available measure of whether Sri Lankan corruption prosecutions actually reach a verdict. Ten years is how long the first case has taken to get there.