Former education minister Aishath Ali’s legal team member, Attorney Ahmed Mauroof, has strongly criticized Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), citing that he doubts whether even the Commission is clear on the allegations against the former minister.
Three individuals who served as cabinet ministers in the last MDP administration have been summoned to ACC for questioning over a settlement awarded to Swift Engineering in 2019 as compensation for the termination of a government contract. While Aishath Ali was summoned on Wednesday, Ibrahim Ameer and Fayyaz Ismail, who served as the finance minister and economic minister, respectively, were questioned earlier.
Speaking to the press outside the ACC headquarters, Mauroof strongly criticized ACC, citing that he doubts whether even the Commission is clear on the allegations against Aishath Ali in connection with the case. He added that a lengthy time period was spent on clearing up the allegations.
“We raised two issues. In this regard, one pertains to the fact that the allegations underscore granting an undue benefit. We asked who had decided it was an undue benefit, but they could not give an explanation for this,” he detailed.
Mauroof explained that while compensation was awarded, the committee that the minister was part of at the time did not make the final decision regarding the settlement.
“When questions were asked, they were just general questions. There was no correlation to the criminal allegations against these individuals,” he added.
Mauroof further said ACC lacked most documents related to the case.
Fayyaz, who was summoned to ACC earlier in connection with the case, has also slammed the allegations as “baseless”, citing the commission’s investigators lacked the most basic information pertaining to the investigation.
The former ministers are accused of abusing their authority as a member of the alternate dispute resolution committee which made the decision to provide Swift Engineering - a company that Saudhulla Hilmy, an incumbent parliamentarian from the ruling People’s National Congress (PNC), has stakes in - with an undue benefit, precluding the state of a benefit, and causing losses to the state.
Meanwhile, Saudulla has also defended the settlement awarded to his company. He said that the company wasn’t given a cash payout, but was compensated with projects with terms favorable terms for the government.