Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) has denied bribing employees of M7 Print to testify that there was fraud in the presidential election.

This comes after police received a complaint that the ruling party had approached employees of M7 Print, which had printed ballot papers for the election, to compel them to back the party’s claim of electoral fraud.

In a press statement on Friday, PPM stated that the accusation of bribery is an attempt to ruin the party’s reputation and a distraction from the Supreme Court case to nullify the election result.

In evidence to this, PPM highlighted that one of the M7 Print shareholders is a council member of opposition Jumhooree Party (JP) and that its parent company Axis Maldives consists of shareholders Siyad Qasim and Khadheeja Sana, the children of JP leader Qasim Ibrahim.

PPM also threatened to sue those who filed the police complaint for defamation.

M7’s managing director Mohamed Abdul Sattar has said that their employees were approached with large amounts of money to give false testimonies and that were threatened for informing their employers.

He added that they have filed a complaint at the police service.