{"id":43209,"date":"2026-09-04T13:45:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T13:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/43209\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T13:45:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T13:45:08","slug":"sri-lanka-arrests-ex-presidents-son-over-airbus-deal-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/43209\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka arrests ex-president’s son over Airbus deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> Namal Rajapaksa is one of several Sri Lankan politicians and officials embroiled in a corruption scandal linked to the Airbus deal (Ishara S. KODIKARA) <\/p>\n

Sri Lankan anti-graft authorities on Friday arrested lawmaker Namal Rajapaksa, the son of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, accusing him of receiving $800,000 linked to a 2013 Airbus deal. <\/p>\n

The Colombo Chief Magistrate Asanga Bodaragama ordered the 40-year-old scion of the once-powerful Rajapaksa family to be held for two weeks pending further investigations. <\/p>\n

He was taken before court by the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC), which arrested him after questioning over the $2.3 billion Airbus transaction. <\/p>\n

The CIABOC told court that Rajapaksa had received $800,000, part of money allegedly paid by the European aircraft manufacturer to Sri Lankan politicians and officials to secure the deal. <\/p>\n

A Sri Lankan businessman had arranged the transfer of cash to Rajapaksa via two Singapore bank accounts, the court was told. <\/p>\n

Rajapaksa’s lawyer Nishantha Dayananda sought bail, but it was denied. <\/p>\n

CIABOC had questioned the former president himself in May over allegations that he, too, had received kickbacks from the aircraft purchase, which was cancelled by a new government in 2016. <\/p>\n

The anti-graft probe centres on claims that the European manufacturer channelled part of the money from the purchase to senior Sri Lankan officials and politicians. <\/p>\n

The Rajapaksa family has denied allegations that they received bribes and dismissed corruption claims against them as politically motivated. <\/p>\n

Former SriLankan Airlines chief executive Kapila Chandrasena told investigators in March that he had handed nearly half a million dollars in kickbacks to the senior Rajapaksa. <\/p>\n

Chandrasena was found dead at a relative’s home in May, shortly before he was due to be rearrested. The cause of death has not been established. <\/p>\n

A joint investigation by US, British and French authorities previously found Airbus had agreed to pay about $16 million in bribes in Sri Lanka, with $1.7 million routed to Chandrasena before the scandal was uncovered. <\/p>\n

The payments were linked to the purchase of 10 Airbus aircraft, which required cabinet approval during Rajapaksa’s presidency from 2005 to 2015. <\/p>\n

According to submissions made in court, Chandrasena initially told investigators he had paid Rajapaksa 60 million rupees ($461,000 at the time) in three instalments in 2013. <\/p>\n

He later retracted the statement, claiming it had been made under pressure. <\/p>\n

SriLankan Airlines has accumulated losses estimated at nearly $2 billion, and repeated attempts to privatise the debt-laden flag carrier have failed. <\/p>\n

aj\/ami <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Namal Rajapaksa is one of several Sri Lankan politicians and officials embroiled in a corruption scandal linked to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[90,8163,27552,27558,27560,27559],"class_list":["post-43209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-airbus","tag-airbus","tag-chandrasena","tag-namal-rajapaksa","tag-rajapaksa","tag-rajapaksa-60-million-rupees","tag-sri-lankan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}