Sri Lankan court extends detention of Shiranthi Rajapaksa — Al Jazeera
A court in Colombo, Sri Lanka, extended the detention of Shiranthi Rajapaksa, the wife of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, until Friday. She was detained on October 7 over suspicions of misuse of donations collected for a children's hospital in the country's capital.
As Al Jazeera reports, Sri Lanka's Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption detained the 73-year-old Rajapaksa over the case of the Siriliya Saviya foundation, which she heads. The foundation is suspected of improperly using nearly 100 million rupees, or about $30,000, intended to purchase equipment for a children's hospital.
Investigators' version and the party's position
Investigators told the court that the Chinese government had already provided the hospital with a magnetic resonance imaging scanner. According to the Commission, despite this, the foundation continued collecting donations for such a machine, and the funds may have been used to purchase a house. Investigators intend to seek the freezing of this asset.
Sagara Kariyawasam, general secretary of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna party, rejected the allegations. According to him, the money is held in a frozen bank account of the Siriliya Saviya foundation. Shiranthi Rajapaksa's lawyers asked the court to grant bail in view of her health condition, but the request was rejected.
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Cases involving other family members
A month before Shiranthi Rajapaksa's detention, her son, parliamentarian Namal Rajapaksa, was arrested on bribery charges. He remains in custody. He is on trial in a case concerning an alleged $30,000 bribe in a government deal with Airbus for the purchase of aircraft for the national airline.
Namal Rajapaksa is also involved in an investigation into an alleged $211,000 bribe that, according to investigators, a foreign private company paid to accelerate the transfer of state land. Another son of the former president, Yoshitha Rajapaksa, is under investigation in a money-laundering case. Mahinda Rajapaksa's brother, Basil, has an arrest warrant for failing to appear in court in a case involving the purchase of real estate allegedly with illicit funds; Al Jazeera notes that he is likely in the United States.
The Rajapaksa family ruled Sri Lanka for nearly two decades but lost power after protests in 2022 caused by the economic crisis. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, elected in 2024, promised to hold members of the family and previous administrations accountable as part of an anti-corruption program.
