Former Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe was taken into custody by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on Friday over allegations of misusing state funds, according to local television channel Ada Derana.
Wickremesinghe, 76, was arrested after arriving at the CID office in the capital Colombo to record a statement in an investigation into his visit to London to attend his wife’s graduation ceremony, the report said.
A Sri Lanka Police spokesperson did not immediately confirm the arrest. Wickremesinghe’s office did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
A lawyer who served as Sri Lanka’s prime minister a record six times, Wickremesinghe was made president in 2022 during the island nation’s debilitating financial crisis.
Wickremesinghe, who is the leader of the United National Party (UNP), took over after widespread protests caused by an economic meltdown forced his predecessor, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to flee Sri Lanka and later resign.
Born into a prominent family of politicians and businessmen with large interests in the media, a 29-year-old Wickremesinghe was made the country’s youngest cabinet minister by his uncle, President Junius Jayewardene, in 1978.
In 1994, following assassinations that wiped out several of his senior colleagues, Wickremesinghe became leader of the UNP.
Case Against Wickremesinghe
In 2023, Ranil Wickremesinghe made a stopover in London while returning from Havana, where he had taken part in the G77 summit. During his stay in the British capital, he, along with his wife, attended a ceremonial event hosted by the University of Wolverhampton.
Wickremesinghe has consistently maintained that the travel expenses of his wife were borne by her personally and that there was no use of public funds for her trip.
The Criminal Investigation Department, however, has alleged that Wickremesinghe misused state money to cover his own travel costs during what was described as a private visit. Furthermore, the CID claims that his security personnel accompanying him were also financed with government funds.
(With inputs from Reuters and IBNS)
