Old Files, New Arrests: The Bribery Commission Is Busy. Is It Also Fair, and Is It Winning in Court?

Fighting corruption was the central promise that carried the National People’s Power to office in 2024. Two years later, the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption, known as CIABOC or the Bribery Commission, is visibly active. The first fortnight of November alone produced a string of arrests.

According to Sri Lanka Mirror and the Tamil Guardian, the Commission arrested a retired Deputy Excise Commissioner, Channa Jayanath Alwis Weerakkody, and an excise officer attached to the Matara Excise Station, Polgampalage Sampath Ranasinghe, in the first week of November. They are accused of accepting cheques drawn on the accounts of a licensed company that the senior officer was supervising. The two reports give different dates for the arrests.

Onlanka reported that on 6 November the Commission arrested a former supplies officer of Lanka Phosphate Limited over an alleged loss of US$5,830 to the company during a 2017 import of spare parts. On 10 November, the Daily Mirror reported that the former chairman of the National Water Supply and Drainage Board, Nishantha Ranatunga, had been arrested in connection with an ongoing investigation; the report did not say what he is alleged to have done. On 11 November, Onlanka reported the arrest of a former chairman of Chilaw Plantations Limited over an alleged loss of Rs. 3.275 million in 2014, when, the Commission alleges, he approved the purchase of 5,000 sets of clothing from a business owned by a board member, at the request of the then Minister and without proper procurement.

Every person arrested is entitled to the presumption of innocence, and Lanka Witness makes no judgment about any individual case. But the pattern raises fair questions about what the Commission is prioritising, and about how the public can tell whether this is a serious anti-corruption drive or a drive that looks serious.

Why so many old cases?

Many of the recent cases concern events from a decade or more ago. The Commission has an explanation. Its Director General, Ranga Dissanayake, told Parliament’s Committee on Public Finance in late September that the Commission had inherited a large backlog of files, mostly dating from around 2015 and from presidential commissions of inquiry, Newswire reported on 30 September and 1 October. He said about 70 cases came from one such presidential commission, that some 2019 files saw no real progress until 2025, and that a special unit had been set up so that old cases do not run out of legal time. He gave the example of a 2005 file that had to be closed because the 20-year limit for prosecution had passed.

That is a reasonable explanation, and clearing old files is necessary work. A corruption case that is allowed to lapse is a reward for delay. Dissanayake also told the committee that preliminary inquiries that once dragged on for up to nine years must now be finished within a month, and that newer complaints are still being handled. If those reforms hold, they are real improvements.

But the explanation has a political side that the government cannot ignore. Most of the people in those old files served under previous governments. At the same committee meeting, according to Newswire, the committee chairman, Opposition MP Dr Harsha de Silva, alleged that the Commission was disproportionately pursuing Opposition figures. Dissanayake replied that the backlog happened to implicate several Opposition individuals, and that the Commission could have dropped the old cases but chose to pursue them. Lanka Witness presents the Opposition’s allegation as an allegation. It is not proven. But it is the kind of concern that only transparency can answer.

The numbers that matter

Arrests are the most visible part of anti-corruption work, but they are the beginning, not the end. The Commission’s own figures, reported by the press, show the gap between activity and results.

According to The Morning, which reported on the Commission’s progress report for 2025, the Commission received 8,409 complaints that year, arrested 84 suspects, filed 115 new cases and secured 42 convictions. At the end of 2025, 305 cases were pending in the courts. According to the Daily FT’s report on the Commission’s April 2026 progress report, between January and April 2026 it received 2,686 complaints, made 70 arrests and filed 38 cases. In the same period, 29 cases were concluded: 13 with convictions, 10 with acquittals, and the rest withdrawn or discharged. Pending court cases rose to 314.

Those figures deserve careful reading. Thirteen convictions against ten acquittals is not a strong record for cases that the Commission chose to bring. And a court backlog that keeps growing means that many people arrested today may not see a verdict for years. Anti-corruption work that produces arrests but not timely judgments risks becoming punishment by process, which is unfair to the innocent and too gentle on the guilty.

Real reforms, unfinished business

There is genuine progress to acknowledge. The Sunday Times reported in August that the new electronic system for declaring assets and liabilities now covers more than 160,000 officials, up from about 300 under the old paper system, and that politicians’ declarations are publicly accessible. That is a meaningful step under the Anti-Corruption Act of 2023, and it is linked to Sri Lanka’s IMF programme.

Yet even here, delivery lags. Newswire reported on 1 October that the Director General told the Committee on Public Finance that about 34,000 people had been identified as liable for penalties for late declarations, and that there was at that time no money in the relevant fund. A law that is not enforced for lack of money is a law that invites contempt.

What would show this is fair

The government’s strongest answer to the charge of selectivity would be openness. The Commission is independent and should remain so; ministers should not direct it. But Parliament and the government can make sure it has the money, prosecutors and judges to move faster, and the Commission itself can publish more.

Lanka Witness suggests three steps. First, the Commission should publish, each quarter, the number of cases by the year of the alleged offence, so the public can see how much of its work concerns old files and how much concerns recent conduct, including conduct under the present government. Second, it should publish conviction and acquittal rates and the average time from arrest to verdict. Third, the government should fund more High Court capacity for corruption trials, because the courts, not the arrests, are where accountability is decided.

The NPP promised that no one would be above the law. The test of that promise is not how many former officials are arrested, but whether the same rules, the same speed and the same scrutiny apply to everyone, including the party in power.