COLOMBO: Sri Lankan anti-graft officials said on Friday they had arrested the former head of the national airline on charges of conspiring to accept bribes from Airbus over a multi-million-dollar deal.

Kapila Chandrasena, who was CEO of Sri Lankan Airlines during a 2013 deal to purchase 10 aircraft worth $2.3 billion, was arrested on Thursday and remanded in custody, officials said.

“He conspired to accept a bribe of $16 million and received 1.45 million euros into a bank account in Singapore,” an official of Sri Lanka’s anti-corruption commission said.

Prosecutors say Chandrasena created a shell company in Brunei in his wife’s name and arranged for the kickback to be paid into its Singapore account.

Sri Lanka’s national carrier is saddled with debt, with estimated accumulated losses of 596 billion rupees ($1.9 billion) at the end of March last year. Attempts to sell the airline have so far failed to attract a buyer.

Chandrasena was previously arrested and released on bail in Feb 2020 in a similar but separate case.

At that time, the United States, Britain and France named him in a joint investigation into Airbus business deals.

In Jan 2020, a French court approved a fine of 3.6 billion euros to be paid by the European aircraft manufacturer to France, Britain and the United States to settle the probes.

Investigators in Britain accused Airbus of failing to prevent persons associated with the company from bribing directors or employees of Sri Lankan Airlines to “obtain or retain business or advantage”.

In June last year, Nishantha Wickramasinghe, who was chairman of Sri Lankan Airlines when the carrier contracted to buy the 10 aircraft in 2013, was arrested in an unrelated corruption case.

Published in Dawn, March 14th, 2026