The High Court on Sunday nullified the verdict issued by the Criminal Court to freeze former President Abdulla Yameen’s bank accounts.
Criminal Court had back in 2018 ordered the Maldives Islamic Bank to freeze eight accounts linked to him from 13 December 2018 till 12 March 2019, over alleged financial fraud during his presidency.
While Yameen had appealed at the High Court seeking to overturn the Criminal Court order to freeze two bank accounts linked to him, hearings in the appeal case concluded on 14 February.
Some of the points noted by the High Court include that the freeze order comes after a letter was addressed to the Maldives Police Service (MPS) by the Maldives Monetary Authority in November 2018, seeking to freeze the accounts after having noticed unusual transactions.
While the Criminal Court had back in February ordered to keep Yameen in detention for the remainder of his trial, High Court had on Thursday ordered to release him from detention.
He was released after a change made to the judges’ bench presiding over his case.
The High Court order notes that the maximum period of detention in such a case, is 30 days which expired on March 18.
Yameen is accused of having a hand in the biggest case of graft recorded in the country’s history involving Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Corporation (MMPRC). He was interrogated over the millions of embezzled funds that had been deposited to his bank accounts earlier.
While Yameen had denied all the charges raised against him, police had earlier announced that they had found hefty amounts of cash to have been deposited in his accounts (approximately MVR 100 million), in Bank of Maldives and Islamic Bank during the past five years. Police also found that illicit transactions had also been carried out through these accounts.
On 14 February, Anti-Corruption Commission revealed via a report that Yameen’s Islamic Bank account was opened six days before the USD one million was transferred from Scores of Flair, a company implicated in the MMPRC embezzlement scandal.
Want to share a story with raajje.mv? email us at [email protected] or call (+960) 9110099