About 24 hours before the President of Sri Lanka fled to the Maldives on Wednesday, his younger brother, the finance minister, made his own attempt to leave the country.

But officials at the Bandaranaike International Airport in Colombo stopped Basil Rajapaksa from boarding a plane out of the country. Reports in local media suggested that he was headed to Dubai, in the UAE, and have now fuelled speculation that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa will also try to make his way to the oil-rich state.

Like the Maldives, whose leaders have close ties with the Rajapaksa family, the UAE has been an ally of Sri Lanka.

It is the third largest source of imports in Sri Lanka, according to the World Bank. And Gotabaya Rajapaksa had plans to visit the UAE, according to recent reports, to procure fuel to ease his country’s dire shortage. If Rajapaksa ends up in the UAE, he would join a growing roster of disgraced leaders who have sought refuge there.

The coterie includes former President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan, who reportedly departed his country with duffel bags full of cash and ensconced himself in the UAE, and Spain’s former monarch, Juan Carlos, who abruptly left for Abu Dhabi, the wealthy Gulf state’s capital, in the midst of an investigation into his wealth. Pakistan’s former military leader, Pervez Musharraf, and the country’s former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, both lived in Dubai for years in self-imposed exile.

Two former Thai Prime Ministers — the siblings Yingluck and Thaksin Shinawatra — each made the UAE home, at least for a time, after being forced out of their country, as did Muhammad Dahlan, a former powerful Gaza security chief. Maldives ‘unhappiness’ The Maldives National Party on Wednesday expressed “unhappiness” over the Maldivian government’s decision to allow Rajapaksa to travel to the country, and said it will seek an explanation from the Solih government.

New York Times News Service and PTI