Colombo, 22 Aug

Sri Lanka's former president Ranil Wickremesinghe was arrested on Friday for allegedly misusing the state funds during his tenure as head of state, police said.

Wickremesinghe, 76, was arrested at the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) headquarters, where he was summoned to record a statement in connection with an investigation into the alleged misuse of government funds, police said.

Later, the veteran opposition leader was produced before a magistrates' court in Colombo.

Wickremesinghe, who served as president from 2022 to 2024, has been accused of using state funds to travel to England to attend the convocation ceremony of his wife, Prof Maithree, in September 2023. It has been alleged that Wickremesinghe was returning from the US after an official engagement and visited the UK at the state's expense to attend the private engagement of his wife.

The CID had previously questioned his staff about the travel expenses.

Wickremesinghe, who had replaced Gotabaya Rajapaksa as President to serve the balance term until the end of 2024, was credited with steering Sri Lanka out of the economic crisis of 2022. Wickremesinghe, a lawyer-turned politician who had been in Parliament for more than five decades, also served six separate terms as prime minister.

Wickremesinghe, the nephew of Sri Lanka's first executive president Junius Jayewardene, was first appointed Prime Minister from 1993 to 1994 after the assassination of President Ranasinghe Premadasa.

According to BBC Sinhala, Wickremesinghe made 23 foreign trips during his time as president, at a cost of more than SLRs 600 million (USD 2 million). Wickremesinghe is the first former president to be arrested in Sri Lanka, it added.

Born in 1949 after Sri Lanka gained independence from the British, Wickremesinghe was elected to Parliament in 1977 at the age of 28, having worked in the Youth League of the United National Party (UNP) from his university days.

As the youngest minister in Sri Lanka at the time, he held the post of Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs under President Jayewardene.

He was later appointed to the Cabinet as the Minister of Youth Affairs and Employment. He has also held the portfolio of Education. Then, in 1989, as a seasoned legislator, he was made the Leader of the House under President Premadasa. He has also served as the Minister of Industries, Science and Technology.

His party UNP, the oldest party in the country, had failed to win a single seat in 2020 parliamentary polls. He was unseated for the first time since 1977 but later found his way to Parliament through the sole national list allocated to the UNP on the basis of cumulative national vote.

In the 2024 elections, he lost to Anura Kumara Dissanayake.