Recovering fraudulent NDB funds is a distant dream
Most of the Rs. 13.2 billion NDB Bank fraud money is unlikely to be recovered, senior banking officials said. “None of the authorities is affirmatively confirming the chances of recovering this cash,” an official told the Sunday Times Business.
Since most of this money has been converted to cryptocurrency, the recallability of the cash has stopped. “Because of this, the money does not have any traceability, and it cannot be recovered,” another banker said. NDB officials declined to comment on this issue. However in the latest 1st quarter 2026 results released by the bank on Thursday, the bank’s Director/CEO Kelum Edirisinghe is quoted as saying that the bank continues to extend its fullest assistance to facilitate ongoing investigations and statutory processes including the pursuance of recovering the sums.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is probing all listed financial institutions for irregularity in reporting incidents relating to this fraud, which took place over 18 months. The SEC also interviewed the board of directors at NDB recently in connection with this fraud.
The majority of the banks that the Sunday Times Business spoke to said that with whatever the funds that they acquired relating to NDB, triggered Suspicion Transaction Reports (STRs) and these were submitted to the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Central Bank (CB) which is the national agency responsible for receiving and analysing data related to suspicious financial transactions, acting as the central repository for reports on money laundering etc.
When checked with the sources at CB, the Sunday Times Business found that whatever the STRs received was acted upon, targets and networks were identified and were sent to law enforcement authorities. Now, the Criminal Investigation Department is currently probing all these claims.
Additionally, with the impending mutual evaluation (ME) of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Sri Lanka is facing a considerable risk of a bad report card in the wake of this fraud. The lack of regulatory oversight and serious governance issues relating to Domestic Systemically Important Banks (DSIB) may risk warnings by FATF, analysts warned.
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