Sri Lanka’s e-Passport Scandal: How a Rigged Tender Is Turning Into an International Crisis
Poland prepares to take Sri Lanka to the European Union as allegations of a fraudulent passport bidding process expose a pattern of corruption that has plagued the island nation for years.
The Bomb That Just Exploded in Colombo
Sri Lanka is no stranger to government scandals. But the latest controversy hitting the Department of Immigration and Emigration (DIE) is different — because this time, a foreign government is preparing to drag the island nation before the European Union.
Poland’s government-owned security printing company, the Polish Security Printing Works (PWPW), is now seriously considering filing a formal complaint with the EU after Sri Lanka allegedly rigged its e-passport personalization tender in favor of a French multinational called Thales DIS Finland. Seven international bidders — including companies from Germany, India, France, the UAE, Malaysia, and Poland — were pushed aside without clear or credible explanations.
If Poland follows through, Sri Lanka will face diplomatic heat at the highest level. This is not a domestic squabble. This is a national security procurement scandal that is rapidly escalating into a full-blown international crisis.
What Is the e-Passport Tender and Why Does It Matter?
To understand why this story is so important, we need to understand what an e-passport actually is.
An e-passport, or biometric passport, contains a tiny electronic chip embedded inside the back cover. That chip stores the holder’s personal data, fingerprints, and a digital photograph. These passports meet International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards — the global body that sets the rules for travel documents — making them harder to forge and easier to verify at border checkpoints worldwide.
Sri Lanka desperately needs to upgrade to e-passports. The country’s existing stock of old-style machine-readable passports (MRPs) has been running dangerously low for years, creating massive queues, delayed travel, and public fury. Students studying abroad, migrant workers sending money home to their families, and ordinary travelers have all suffered because of the passport shortage.
Getting the e-passport tender right is therefore critical — not just for national security, but for the economic survival of hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans.
Eight Companies Entered. Only One Was Picked — Suspiciously.
The Department of Immigration and Emigration published the tender for e-passport personalization on April 27, 2025. Eight major international companies applied: German government-owned Veridos GmbH, UAE-based Tahaluf Al Emarat Technical Solutions, Indian company Madras Security Printers Pvt. Ltd, UAE-based United Printing and Publishing, Thales Finland (a French company bidding through its Finland office), France-based IN Group, Polish government-owned PWPW, and Malaysian company IRIS Corporation Berhad.
Every single one of these companies is a serious, respected player in the global secure document industry. They didn’t walk into this casually — they submitted detailed technical proposals, spent resources preparing bids, and waited for a fair evaluation.
What happened next shocked most of them.
The Sri Lankan government informed PWPW that they had scored fewer marks than required and that Thales Finland had won the bid. The other six losing companies each received different rejection letters with varying explanations — none of which the bidders found convincing.
PWPW, along with several other companies, challenged the result. The appeals board reviewed the objections and ordered the government to re-evaluate PWPW’s bid and consider opening their financial proposal, acknowledging that PWPW had exceeded the minimum qualifying score. But even after this re-evaluation, the government still refused to open PWPW’s price bid, while Thales Finland’s price proposal had been open since the very beginning.
Think about that for a moment. The winning company’s price was open from day one — while a qualified competitor’s price was never opened at all. That is not a mistake. That is a process designed to produce a predetermined result.
The Same Company. Again. A Pattern of Favoritism.
Here is where the story gets even darker.
Thales DIS Finland, partnered with its Sri Lankan agent Just In Time Technologies Pvt Ltd, is the same company that former Public Security Minister Tiran Alles selected in September 2024 to supply 750,000 N-series machine-readable passports. That deal was challenged in court over allegations of bypassing procurement guidelines.
Epic Lanka (Pvt) Ltd filed a writ petition in the Court of Appeal alleging that the Cabinet had approved the procurement outside of proper procedure, circumventing National Procurement Guidelines. The petitioners alleged that the National Procurement Commission acknowledged in writing that the procurement had irregularities.
Epic Lanka’s executive chairman stated that the bidding process related to e-passport procurement was compromised, tainted with bad faith, and manipulated to give an unfair advantage to certain vendors while disadvantaging others. and the same company, Thales/JIT, sits at the center of both of them.
Poland Writes to Colombo — And Gets Silence
PWPW did not accept defeat quietly. The company escalated its concerns directly to Sri Lanka’s highest levels of government.
In a letter dated March 13, 2026, PWPW wrote to Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath. The letter described PWPW as the world’s oldest and most respected high-security printing company, wholly owned by the Polish State Treasury, with a proven track record of delivering secure documents for Poland and several other EU countries. The company proposed that an independent Technical Evaluation Committee — comprising officials from the Department of Immigration and Emigration, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Digital Economy, and the Ministry of Finance — should re-evaluate all bids to ensure a fair and balanced result.
The Polish Embassy in New Delhi formally backed this request, adding diplomatic weight to an already serious situation.
A delegation from PWPW, accompanied by a Polish Embassy representative, planned to visit Sri Lanka on March 23, 2026, to hold face-to-face meetings with Sri Lankan officials.
As of the latest reports, no official response from the Sri Lankan government has been received.
In a separate letter to Public Security Minister Ananda Wijepala, PWPW stated clearly that it disagreed with the rejection, asserting that it had fully complied with all eligibility criteria and submitted a comprehensive, competitive bid with all required documentation.
Sri Lanka’s silence in the face of these letters from a foreign government and its official embassy is not a neutral act. It is a statement of its own.
The EU Complaint Threat: What It Really Means
When Poland talks about filing a complaint with the European Union, it is not just issuing empty words. The EU has enormous leverage over Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka benefits from the EU’s Generalized Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP+), a trade arrangement that gives Sri Lankan exports — particularly garments — preferential access to European markets. This access is conditional on good governance, rule of law, and fair treatment of foreign partners. A formal complaint by an EU member state about fraudulent procurement practices in Sri Lanka could trigger a review of that arrangement, potentially costing the country millions in lost export revenue.
Beyond trade, the EU is also a significant source of development aid and diplomatic support for Sri Lanka. A diplomatic complaint from Poland — even though Poland is one of the EU’s newer members — carries real institutional weight inside Brussels.
The Sri Lankan government must understand that ignoring PWPW’s letters is not a low-cost decision. Every day that passes without a credible response increases the probability that Poland escalates to a formal EU-level complaint.
The Bigger Picture: Sri Lanka’s Broken Procurement System
This scandal does not exist in isolation. It is the latest chapter in a long story of broken government procurement in Sri Lanka.
The Sri Lankan passport crisis that crippled thousands of citizens — including students studying abroad and migrant workers — grew directly out of the previous government’s mishandling of the original e-passport tender, in which conditions were reportedly changed to favor certain parties.
The initial tender aimed to outsource the printing of five million e-passports over ten years through a public-private partnership. However, this was cancelled following a ministerial proposal. A new tender was floated, and Thales and JIT were again awarded the contract — but concerns emerged because they later claimed the existing DIE infrastructure was inadequate for printing e-passports and proposed a new setup that would require a Rs. 1.5 billion investment, bypassing original tender requirements entirely.
The pattern is consistent: a tender is floated, conditions are manipulated, Thales/JIT wins, competitors complain, courts get involved, and ordinary Sri Lankans suffer while politicians and middlemen profit.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s National People’s Power (NPP) government came to power promising to clean up exactly this kind of corruption. The passport tender scandal is now a direct test of whether that promise means anything.
What Must Happen Now
The Sri Lankan government must take four immediate actions.
First, it must formally respond to PWPW’s letters and the Polish Embassy’s request for a meeting. Silence is not an option when a foreign government has officially raised concerns about procurement fraud.
Second, it must establish the independent Technical Evaluation Committee that PWPW proposed — one that includes cross-ministry representation and no involvement from the original evaluation panel.
Third, it must open PWPW’s price bid. If PWPW qualified technically, there is no legal or ethical basis for keeping their financial proposal sealed while Thales Finland’s proposal was opened from the first day.
Fourth, the government must launch a transparent investigation into who made the decision to reject seven companies without credible explanation, and whether that decision was influenced by improper means.
Sri Lanka cannot afford another e-passport scandal. The country is still rebuilding from its worst economic crisis in living memory. Every rupee lost to corruption is a rupee stolen from the people who need it most.
The Verdict
Poland is not just complaining about losing a business contract. Poland is raising a fundamental question: Can Sri Lanka run a fair, transparent government procurement process — or will every major contract continue to find its way to the same preferred vendor through the same suspicious process?
The world is watching. The EU is watching. And millions of Sri Lankans — who simply want a passport that works — are watching too.
If the government chooses silence and inaction, it will not just lose Poland’s goodwill. It will confirm what too many Sri Lankans already fear: that the system is rigged, and that nothing has really changed.