Namal Rajapaksa’s Arrest and Sri Lanka’s Politics of Mutual Protection

Sri Lankan investigators arrested Namal Rajapaksa on September 4 over allegations that he received 100 million Sri Lankan rupees (about $800,000 per 2014-15 exchange rates) in bribes linked to an aircraft procurement deal involving SriLankan Airlines in 2012-13.

The arrest shows that investigators have moved beyond airline officials and business intermediaries to a member of Sri Lanka’s most powerful political family.

The reaction to the arrest was interesting. The United National Party (UNP), which led the 2015-19 Yahapalanaya (good governance) government under which several investigations against Rajapaksa began, joined the Rajapaksa family-led Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) in condemning his arrest. Their response also demonstrates why a political party from outside the UNP-SLPP establishment needed to be in power to pursue investigations against powerful politicians.

Most of the political opposition and their allies in the media and religious establishments have come out in support of the Rajapaksas, and enormous resources are being spent to discredit the arrest of Namal. Thus, the question is not merely whether Namal will be convicted, but whether the National People’s Power (NPP) anti-corruption campaign can survive contact with the same political pressures that neutered every previous attempt to hold Sri Lanka’s elites to account.

A Money Trail Left Unfinished

In 2020, Airbus agreed to pay nearly $4 billion to settle international bribery investigations. As part of the investigations, foreign officials traced suspicious payments linked to SriLankan Airlines’ aircraft purchases, and a British court made details of the transactions public. In response, the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government arrested former SriLankan Airlines CEO Kapila Chandrasena and his wife. But the investigation went no further; the two were released on bail, and no action was taken to determine whether Chandrasena and others worked with politicians.

Even in 2020, authorities knew that part of the money had been sent to a company connected to businessman Nimal Perera, who was closely associated with the Rajapaksas. Yet neither the Gotabaya Rajapaksa administration (2019-2022) nor the Ranil Wickremesinghe administration (2022-2024) investigated what Perera did with the money. That investigation was only initiated after the NPP came into power.

The Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) told the court that 1.454 million euros (or $1.69 million as per the September 2026 exchange rate) in bribe money was deposited into a Standard Chartered Bank account in Singapore maintained by Biz Solutions Inc., a company registered in Brunei and controlled by Chandrasena’s wife. Of that amount, $800,000 was allegedly transferred to an Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Limited (OCBC) account in Singapore maintained by Sabre Vision Holdings Ltd., a company belonging to Perera. Investigators allege that Perera converted the money into Sri Lankan rupees and handed it to Namal Rajapaksa in several installments during 2014 and 2015.

After investigations began under the NPP, investigators traveled to Australia, where Perera now lives, and obtained a sworn affidavit from him. He reportedly refused to return to Sri Lanka because of alleged threats to his life but told investigators that he had handed the rupee equivalent of the $800,000 to Namal Rajapaksa.

Deputy Solicitor General Janaka Bandara also told the court that CIABOC and the Criminal Investigation Department had conducted a joint investigation with assistance from Australia, Singapore, France, and the United States. Airbus officials had also visited the commission several times. An Airbus delegation was in Colombo as recently as August to assist investigators.

These collaborations give the case a stronger foundation. The foreign banking records and international cooperation cannot easily be dismissed as inventions of the NPP. But the most important part of the allegation, i.e., that the money ultimately reached Namal, depends heavily on Perera’s testimony.

President’s Counsel Sampath Mendis, appearing for Namal, argued that neither Airbus officials nor French investigators had accused his client of receiving money. He also questioned Perera’s credibility.

The UNP’s Convenient Conversion

The SLPP had planned a rally under Rajapaksa’s leadership in Anuradhapura on September 12, and the party alleged that the arrest was designed to disrupt its mobilization and weaken its national organizer.

The UNP, which once claimed to be arch-enemies of the Rajapaksas, came to Namal’s aid. It condemned the arrest as an attempt to sabotage the SLPP rally and insisted that Namal had the same democratic right as President Anura Dissanayake to travel around the country and hold public meetings. Wickremesinghe said that with Namal’s arrest, the government was weakening the opposition and threatening Sri Lanka’s democratic system.

The UNP’s response is ironic as investigations into Namal and other members of his family began during the UNP-led Yahapalanaya government. Ever since the Rajapaksas came into power in 2005, the UNP (the main opposition party at the time) insisted that they were a rogue and corrupt political dynasty that is undermining democracy, the rule of law, and the independence of institutions.

When the UNP-led Yahapalanaya administration came to power in 2015, a number of probes were launched against the Rajapaksas. Financial crime investigators arrested Namal twice in 2016 in connection with separate money-laundering allegations. But as with many cases filed during the Yahapalanaya government, these yielded little result and strengthened Rajapaksas’ claims that these lawsuits were examples of political victimization that would not survive judicial scrutiny. The failure of these investigations played a significant role in the return of the Rajapaksas to power in 2019.

Relations between the UNP and the SLPP changed after Sri Lanka’s economic collapse drove Gotabaya Rajapaksa from office in 2022. Wickremesinghe became president through a parliamentary vote and governed with the support of the SLPP majority. Former adversaries became partners in preserving a power structure that had benefitted both sides for decades. The alliance between the two parties validated what the Sri Lankan left had been saying for years — the established political parties are no longer distinguishable from each other and have a vested interest in preserving the status quo. This was another reason for the NPP victory in 2024.

Now in opposition, Wickremesinghe is opposing Namal’s arrest over the Airbus deal. His response is another example of how Sri Lanka’s established political elites close ranks when accountability threatens their power and privilege.

President Dissanayake recently said that Sri Lanka’s former governments had played “cops and robbers” for decades. One group pretended to pursue the other until they exchanged roles. “They were just playing a game,” he said, “but now the real police have arrived.”

Namal Rajapaksa’s arrest is important because the Airbus investigation has now crossed from investigating corporate intermediaries to the political power behind the intermediaries. It also exposes the relationship between two political camps that once pretended to be mortal enemies but now recognize a common threat in the NPP’s accountability campaign.

Sri Lanka’s previous accountability efforts failed because there was no political will on either side to punish powerful politicians.  The Yahapalanaya government’s cases against the Rajapaksas were abandoned not because they could not be proven but because the UNP and the SLPP wanted to preserve a system where former leaders were not jailed for corruption. The difference now is that the NPP has no stake in preserving the old system.