{"id":155885,"date":"2026-04-25T15:33:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T22:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=155885"},"modified":"2026-04-25T15:33:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T22:33:07","slug":"australian-officers-currently-assisting-investigations-in-sl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2026\/04\/25\/australian-officers-currently-assisting-investigations-in-sl\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian officers currently assisting investigations in SL"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy The Daily Mirror<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Colombo, April 25 (Daily Mirror) &#8211; Australian officers are currently assisting with Sri Lanka&#8217;s investigation into the incident in which cyber criminals stole US $ 2.5 million after breaching the computer systems of the Finance Ministry, according to Australian High Commissioner Matthew Duckworth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The funds were part of a bilateral debt repayment to Australia, with a settlement due in September 2025. The diversion had taken place in January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finance Ministry Secretary Dr Harshana Suriyapperuma told a news conference that the cyber criminals had intervened and diverted the funds to other accounts after Sri Lanka made the due payment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Asked for a comment in this regard, the Australian High Commissioner said, From our perspective, really, the two points I would make. Firstly, we are obviously aware of the incident and our officers in Canberra are assisting with Sri Lanka&#8217;s investigation. The second point I&#8217;d make is that this doesn&#8217;t otherwise undermine our ongoing commitment to supporting Sri Lanka&#8217;s return to debt sustainability.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to him, the main issues are really for Sri Lanka to resolve through the investigation already undertaken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sri Lanka has currently launched investigations into the incident with the involvement of multiple agencies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy The Daily Mirror Colombo, April 25 (Daily Mirror) &#8211; Australian officers are currently assisting with Sri Lanka&#8217;s investigation into the incident in which cyber criminals stole US $ 2.5 million after breaching the computer systems of the Finance Ministry, according to Australian High Commissioner Matthew Duckworth. The funds were part of a bilateral debt [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118,166],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption-and-bribery","category-crimes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155885"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155886,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155885\/revisions\/155886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}