-By LeN Investigations Editor
(Lanka-e-News -09.Aug.2025, 11.20 PM) The public spat over whether SupremeSAT’s satellite is “making millions” or “missing entirely” is a sideshow. The numbers — and the timing — tell a far more compelling story.
Company filings show a single, very large “loan” appearing in SupremeSAT’s accounts in 2012/2013. It does not exist in earlier years. It vanishes in later ones. One entry. One year. Gone.
That year was no ordinary year.
In October 2012, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) paid USD 15.6 million for the Lotus Tower. In November, the ChinaSat-12 — rebranded here as “SupremeSAT-1” — was launched, parked first at 51.5°E before shifting to 87.5°E.
It was also the year the Board of Investment granted SupremeSAT tax holidays.
The possibility is obvious: funds from a major state-linked project could have been channelled into SupremeSAT, disguised as a “loan,” sheltered by BOI privileges, and erased from the books within twelve months. That is the anatomy of a bribe or a laundering mechanism — not a conventional investment.
Did SupremeSAT profit from TRC or ITU spectrum rights allocated to Sri Lanka without paying the State?
Was the public misled into believing this was a “Sri Lanka-built” satellite when it was merely leased capacity from China?
Where is the repayment trail for the so-called loan?
Who authorised its quiet disappearance from the accounts?
These are not trivial accounting anomalies. If state assets, regulatory privileges, and international rights were converted into private profit — and masked through financial sleight of hand — it would be a direct breach of public trust and a prosecutable offence under the Bribery Act and Proceeds of Crime Act.
The trail does not end in space. SupremeSAT’s corporate cousins include Supreme TV, which now broadcasts on multiple high-value UHF frequencies once controlled by the Rajapaksa-owned Carlton Sports Network (CSN) — the defunct sports channel that served as both propaganda arm and commercial venture during the family’s peak years.
These include UHF 47 (Piduruthalagala), UHF 28 (Southern Province – Deniyaya/Gonagala), UHF 56 (Sabaragamuwa – Ratnapura), and UHF 32 (Central/North Central – Karagahatenna).
These are not accidental overlaps. The reuse of CSN’s frequencies and physical transmission infrastructure signals a direct continuity of media assets, rebranded but firmly rooted in the same political family’s network.
By 2022, with the Rajapaksas besieged by economic collapse and public fury, the network pivoted. Ranil Wickremesinghe was ushered in as a stabilising political shield — protecting the family’s core economic base and buying time.
At the height of the fuel crisis, Supreme Global Holdings, led by R. M. Manivannan, emerged as a key supplier of petroleum. The company claimed to have extended over USD 1.5 billion in credit to keep fuel flowing — including “innovative” arrangements accepting Sri Lankan rupees for oil.
Such arrangements are almost impossible without large foreign reserves already parked offshore. These funds, according to senior financial analysts, were very likely controlled within the same political-business nexus.
This “rescue” was presented as a patriotic act. But the scale, timing, and opaque terms suggest a more cynical possibility: that the crisis was also a vehicle to move, recycle, and legitimise politically connected wealth through emergency energy deals.
Place the unexplained ₨12 billion “loan” in SupremeSAT’s books alongside:
The Hambantota and Lotus Tower disbursements of late 2012,
The reallocation of CSN’s premium broadcast frequencies to Supreme TV, and
The billion-dollar petroleum manoeuvres during the 2022 crisis,
…and a single, coordinated picture emerges.
This is not a scatter of unrelated ventures. It is a unified political–business apparatus — spanning satellites, media, and energy — engineered to recycle, protect, and expand Rajapaksa wealth. It operates through legitimate corporate fronts, BOI concessions, and “patriotic” crisis interventions to shield flows of money from scrutiny while ensuring assets, influence, and cash remain in the family’s grasp.
From orbit, to the living room screen, to the petrol pump, the Supreme network is not merely connected to the Rajapaksas. It is a Rajapaksa creation, sustained and defended through political placement, state capture, and the control of national infrastructure.
The satellite may be in space, but the real story is grounded here — in the ledger entries, the broadcast slots, and the oil tankers that trace the outline of a family empire hidden in plain sight.
-By LeN Investigations Editor
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by (2025-08-09 17:48:45)
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