Anti-Corruption Commission probes senior state media officials

Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has begun an investigation into senior officials of Public Service Media (PSM).

The commission stated that it was investigating a case of the state media paying rent for two floors of an unfinished building where the Maldives Media Institute is to be established.

It is also investigating a case of senior PSM officials allegedly taking MVR 41 million meant for the Integrated Service Digital Broadcasting-Terrestrial (ISDB-T) network being developed with the help of the Japanese government.

ACC is investigating Mohamed Hashim, the former director of PSM’s procurement department, over the floor-rent case. The commission had filed a report at the Prosecutor General’s office in January but it was rejected for being incomplete.

In the report, ACC stated that PSM paid a total of MVR 481,000 for rent due with Hashim’s approval. The report was filed again at the PG’s office in August after further investigation.

PSM’s former manager of legal and regulatory affairs Abdulla Hilmy was summoned to ACC over the case on September 27. Speaking to the press after the summons, Hilmy said that he was told that authorities found out about PSM paying rent for a building after falsely claiming that the building had finished construction.

Hilmy, who left PSM over the state media’s unlawful conduct, told the press that PSM’s deputy managing director Ikram was probably behind it, as he was managing PSM during that time. Hilmy also said that when he was working at PSM, he had complained that Ikram was handing over projects only to his close associates.

The ISDB-T case was filed at the ACC by a private party on August 30. In a letter, the private party said that Japan pledged to provide MVR 380 million (96% of the cost) for the project and the Maldives government was to spend the remaining MVR 16 million (6%).

The private party claimed that senior PSM officials tried to get more money for their personal gain and requested the finance ministry to give them MVR 179 million for the project. The ministry refused to give them the excessive amount but did provide PSM MVR 57 million, which is still higher than the funding needed. The senior PSM officials then allocated MVR 16 million of the MVR 57 million for the project and took the remaining MVR 41 million for their own gain, the private party claimed.

The private party added that, after receiving the funds, the project manager was fired and the project was handed over to another senior employee, who was later transferred to another department after he found out about the MVR 41 million in alleged stolen money.