Letter to Majlis regarding new corruption allegations against POLCO

A whistleblower's letter has been submitted to the People's Majlis with new allegations of corruption at POLCO, the military welfare company.

The Public Accounts Committee of the People's Majlis has been investigating potential corruption in the "Blues Housing Project" conducted by the Police Welfare Company.

The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) is also investigating this matter.

While a subcommittee of the Parliament's Public Accounts Committee has been formed to investigate this issue, the whistleblower's letter was sent to the Parliament highlighting new instances of corruption occurring at POLCO.

Speaking at the Public Accounts Subcommittee meeting on Sunday, the Subcommittee Chair, MP for Dhiggaru constituency Ahmed Nazim, said that as soon as they began investigating the matter, they received information via email from a whistleblower who works in the police institution.

The letter reportedly alleges widespread corruption within POLCO, beyond just the police housing project issue.

Not just the housing matters. There were acts of corruption carried out by POLCO there. This is happening on a much broader scale where corruption is ongoing within POLCO in the procurement of goods and services.

Ahmed Nazim, Member of Dhiggaru Constituency

Nazim said one of the reports referenced in the letter was a report sent to former Commissioner of Police Mohamed Hameed.

Since this was a whistleblower case, Nazim said it needed to be handled differently.

However, it remains unclear what additional work was carried out in the committee regarding this matter, as the remaining 30 minutes of the committee meeting proceeded with the microphone turned off.

According to the special audit of the Police Housing Project, the original contracted amount was MVR 580 million.

However, MVR 1.06 billion has been spent on the project so far.

The audit report states this amounts to MVR 1,851 per square foot (total 573,332 square feet), while the average cost for such construction work is considered to be between MVR 1,300 and MVR 1,500 per square foot.

Based on these rates, the project should have cost between MVR 745.3 million and maximum MVR 859.9 million.

Therefore, the audit states that between MVR 354.7 million and minimum MVR 240.1 million has been overspent on this project.

The Audit Office said that compared to the initial contract value of MVR 580 million, the project has exceeded costs by MVR 481 million, nearly doubling in expense, indicating POLCO lacks the technical capability to manage such large projects.

They also noted that contracts were amended to benefit contractors, and there were suspicious activities suggesting fraud and corruption within the project.

In addition to this, the Audit Office said the project work was carried out to benefit a specific party. Without disclosing a name, the report states that contracts worth MVR 628.7 million made by POLCO for this project are believed to be directly and indirectly connected to associated companies of "Mr. X."

In a committee meeting with the Auditor General regarding the audit report, Auditor General Hussain Niyazy said the project began in 2013. When the Audit Office met with POLCO management, they said many documents were no longer available due to a server issue.

He said this made it difficult to fully understand how the bidding and evaluation process was conducted. Niyazy said when they couldn't get the information from POLCO, they tried to find the documents in the gazette, but they weren't there either. Therefore, he stated it was important for investigative authorities to examine how the project was carried out.

Auditor General Niyazy said that although POLCO sent some letters after the audit report was published, even up until the report's release, there was no way to know how the project's bidding process was conducted.