Former Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe was arrested by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on Friday in connection with allegations of misuse of state funds, local television channel Ada Derana reported.
Wickremesinghe, 76, was taken into custody 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.
He was due to appear in court later on Friday, local media reported.
However, Newswire, a local news aggregator, reported that his arrest is linked to allegations of using state funds to cover the expenses for a private visit to London, where he had attended a university graduation ceremony.
It was further reported that the investigators claim the trip, which formed part of a wider overseas tour, was not an official engagement but was financed with government money.
A lawyer who served as Sri Lanka’s prime minister a record six times, Wickremesinghe was made president in 2022 during the Indian Ocean island nation’s debilitating financial crisis.
Wickremesinghe, the leader of the United National Party (UNP), took over after widespread protests triggered by an economic meltdown forced his predecessor, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to flee the country and later resign.
He finished third in last year’s presidential election — the first since the economic crisis — behind Marxist-leaning Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who won the vote, and opposition leader Sajith Premadasa.
The election was a referendum on Wickremesinghe, who led a successful but fragile economic recovery that included austerity measures that angered voters.
Born into a prominent family of politicians and businessmen with large media interests, in 1978, Wickremesinghe was, at 29, made the country’s youngest cabinet minister by his uncle, President Junius Jayewardene
In 1994, following assassinations that wiped out several of his senior colleagues, Wickremesinghe became leader of the UNP.
(With inputs from agencies)