SriLankan Airlines detects double financial fraud in Dubai, Chennai
ECONOMYNEXT – State-owned carrier SriLankan Airlines has been hit by two financial frauds in the United Arab Emirates and South India due to hacking of an agent’s email and forgery of documents, two sources and the Deputy Finance Minister said.
The loss-making airline had remitted US$265,000 (974,000 UAE Dirham or around Rs.80 million) to a wrong account after receiving instructions via official email from an agent with its Dubai office to deposit the money in a different bank account, a source aware of the inquiry told EconomyNext.
“The agent’s email was hacked and the hacker has used the agent’s email to ask SriLankan to deposit the money into a different account,” the source said.
The second financial fraud was detected in the SriLankan office in Chennai, where three Indian nationals who had worked in the South Indian office swindled money worth 22,000 Indian rupees (around Rs. 80 million) using forged documents.
“Now, the Indian police are probing this,” a second source said.
The island nation has detected a number of similar financial frauds in the recent past including a US$2.5 million fraud from the Treasury through hacking and US$625,000 from the Postal Department.
Deputy Finance Minister Anil Jayantha said probes are underway into both frauds.
“If there is any leakage or any issue under our government everything will be investigated, the information will be provided and we will address this quickly,” Minister Jayantha told reporters when asked about the frauds.
!The Dubai agent has sent information to Sri Lankan Airlines stating that the problem is with our system. However, they are investigating. We’ll see what has really happened,” he said.
“Of course, that much money was paid by Sri Lankan Airline, not to the agent, but to someone else.”
He said some “Indian Nationals” working in Chennai SriLnkan office Station as employees have forged some documents and “taken some money out”.
“Both is investigated separately. First one is clearly connected to the agent, but the second one is in a way, we can say that the fraud was done by an employee.” (Colombo/May 16/2026)
