Parliamentary watchdog flags questionable leases at Maligawatta, Elvitigala Mawatha and Rangirigama, ordering criminal and bribery investigations into the housing authority
By The Pulseline News Desk
The parliamentary Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) has recommended that a string of alleged land misuse, financial irregularities, and administrative failures at the National Housing Development Authority (NHDA) be handed over to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) for formal investigation.
The recommendation emerged from a recent COPE sitting chaired by member of parliament (MP) Nishantha Samaraweera, convened to examine the Auditor General’s Reports for 2022 and 2023 and to review the NHDA’s overall performance as a state enterprise.
Prime land, nominal value
At the centre of the committee’s concerns were leases of valuable NHDA-owned land in three locations — Maligawatta and Elvitigala Mawatha in Colombo, and Rangirigama in Dambulla — handed to external parties at nominal values, without Cabinet approval.
COPE members raised additional concerns that, beyond the questionable terms of the leases themselves, some of the leased land had subsequently been used for purposes that ran contrary to the original agreements. Taken together with what the committee described as a broader failure to safeguard NHDA assets, the pattern has painted a picture of an authority whose oversight of its own land bank had significantly broken down.
The committee had found that many of the transactions under review had allegedly been carried out in violation of both the NHDA’s founding objectives and the legal provisions meant to govern how a state authority disposes of or leases public land — findings serious enough, in COPE’s assessment, to warrant referral for criminal and anti-corruption investigation rather than administrative correction alone.
What happens next
COPE has directed that comprehensive reports detailing the irregularities be compiled and forwarded to both the CID and CIABOC, opening the door to formal legal proceedings against those found responsible.
In parallel, NHDA officials have been instructed to expedite internal audits, identify the officers responsible for the lapses, and begin disciplinary action where warranted — a track intended to run alongside, rather than substitute for, the criminal and bribery investigations now getting under way.
The committee has also used the session to push for structural fixes, recommending that the NHDA strengthen its asset management and internal control systems to prevent similar irregularities from recurring.
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