Twenty crores paid for mail to America have vanished without a trace.

Information has been revealed that nearly 200 million Sri Lankan Rupees, remitted by the Sri Lanka Post Department to the United States Postal Service (US Post), have gone missing. Cabinet Media Spokesperson Minister Nalinda Jayatissa stated at a press conference yesterday that US postal authorities have informed them that this amount, USD 625,000, has not yet been received by them.

During this discussion held at the Government Information Department, the Minister further stated that the Post Department and the Criminal Investigation Department have already launched separate extensive investigations into the alleged financial fraud. The main objective of these investigations is to uncover what truly happened to this sum of money.

Explaining the matter, Postmaster General Ruwan Sathkumara stated that these payments were made in February and October of 2025, related to the exchange of postal items between the two countries. However, the American side informed them last March that the relevant funds had not been received by them.

The Postmaster General revealed that a previous payment of USD 100,000 made to America had been duly received, but subsequently, these funds were credited to a new account number based on an email stating that the account number had changed. Although Sri Lanka has informed the US Postal Service about this matter, a proper response has not yet been received from them.

Previously, there was a reported incident where USD 2.5 million, intended to be paid to Australia as restructured loan installments, was fraudulently obtained by cyber hackers. Against such a backdrop, the government's serious attention has been drawn to the fact that the Post Department's funds have met a similar fate.

High-level government sources state that continuous monitoring of the security of financial and data systems in all government institutions has now commenced. Steps are expected to be taken in the future to overcome weaknesses in the procedures followed when making foreign payments, especially.