Former Sri Lankan President Wickremesinghe arrested on allegations of misusing state funds

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Police in Sri Lanka arrested former President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Friday over allegations that the senior opposition politician misused public funds during his presidency, police said.

Wickremesinghe, who was president from 2022 to 2024, is accused of using the funds to attend his wife’s graduation ceremony in London after an official visit to the United States, police spokesman Fredrick Wootler told The Associated Press.

Wickremesinghe appeared for a lengthy hearing before a magistrate court in the capital, Colombo, and was ordered to be kept in custody until Aug. 26. He didn't comment during the hearing, and there was no immediate statement from his office. A large crowd of Wickremesinghe's supporters gathered outside the court to protest his arrest.

Wickremesinghe is the first Sri Lankan former head of state to be arrested and the most prominent leader under investigation for corruption under the government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who came to power last year on an anti-corruption platform.

Dissanayake won the presidential election in September when voters rejected an old guard accused of leading the country into an economic crisis. Two months later, his party won a landslide victory in the parliamentary election that enabled him to form a strong government.

Already more than a dozen former high government officials and political leaders are under investigation for alleged wrongdoing.

Wickremesinghe became president after Sri Lanka’s economic upheaval led to a political crisis that forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign in 2022.

Wickremesinghe was credited with stabilizing the crumbling economy. Under his leadership, inflation fell, the local currency strengthened and foreign reserves increased. But he faced public backlash over his government's stringent austerity measures, including raising taxes and utility rates, imposed as part of a bailout package with the International Monetary Fund.

Former Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe, center, is produced in a court by the police in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Friday, Aug. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Lahiru Harshana)

FILE -Sri Lankan president Ranil Wickremesinghe inspects a military guard of honour after arriving at the parliamentary complex in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Aug. 3, 2022. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — A surging stock market and a flurry of deal making padded the profits of Wall Street's two big investment banks, which both saw a double-digit jump in profits in the fourth quarter.

Goldman Sachs's net earnings rose 12% from a year earlier, posting a profit of $4.62 billion, or $14.01 a share. Meanwhile Morgan Stanley said it earned $4.4 billion, or $2.68 per share, compared to a profit of $3.71 billion, or $2.22 per share, compared to a year earlier.

Wall Street has been bolstered by the Trump administration's deregulatory policies, which has led corporations to seek out mergers and acquisitions, as well as the surge of investor interest in artificial intelligence companies and those who stand to benefit from the mass adoption of technologies like ChatGPT.

Fourth-quarter investment fee revenues over at Goldman were up 25% year-over-year and Morgan Stanley saw a 47% jump in revenue in its investment banking division. Both banks said their investment fee backlog, which is a signal of how much deal making is still pending that banks are working on, increased significantly in the fourth quarter.

Goldman and Morgan's results reflect the strong earnings out of the other big banks that reported their results this week. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup all saw jumps in fourth-quarter profits, but their results were dampened by the ongoing tensions that Wall Street is having with the White House over the issue of the independence of the Federal Reserve and President Donald Trump's interest in capping credit card interest rates at 10%.

Along with a strong investment banking performance, Goldman Sachs also agreed to sell off its Apple Card credit card portfolio to JPMorgan Chase last week, effectively exiting its brief experiment in consumer banking. The bank sold the credit card portfolio at a discount to JPMorgan, a sign of how desperately Goldman wanted to exit the business and put the Apple Card behind it.

This story has been corrected to show that Morgan Stanley's investment banking revenues rose 47%, not 22%.

FILE - Electronic signage is shown at Morgan Stanley headquarters, Thursday, March 4, 2021 in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

FILE - In this Dec. 13, 2016, file photo, the logo for Goldman Sachs appears above a trading post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)