Senior officials of central bank Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) are being summoned to the parliament to be questioned over the report issued on the shocking scandal that saw millions of state funds embezzled through Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Company (MMPRC).
The Public Finance Committee of the parliament is summoning the officials on Tuesday to inquire further about the discoveries listed in the report issued by the Anti-Corruption Commission on the scandal.
Being summoned are Governor Ahmed Naseer and former heads of Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of the bank, Abdulla Ashraf and Athif Shakoor.
Both Athif and Ashraf had given statements to the graft watchdog on their account of the MMPRC embezzlement. In his statement, Athif had stated that Bank of Maldives had issued a Suspicious Transaction Report (STR) to the FIU as large amounts of funds were being issued between MMPRC and SOF Private Limited as "currency exchange transactions" under a special agreement established between both parties, although no documentation proving this were provided by the involved parties. Upon receiving the STR, an investigation was launched into SOF Pvt Ltd by FIU and a report was made based on its findings.
Abdulla Ashraf, who was also involved in the investigation gave his statement stating that he himself had noticed transactions amounting to large sums being carried out between SOF Pvt Ltd and MMPRC. In his statement, he had further noted that a large sum of the funds were transferred out from the account within the span of a week.