Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) Governor Ahmed Naseer has said that a bot had leaked information from the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) database.

At a meeting with the independent institutions committee, Governor Naseer said the information was leaked on the Telegram Messenger app.

The parliament committee held the meeting over a letter the former head of FIU Abdulla Ashraf sent, accusing Governor Naseer of influencing the FIU by ordering it to investigate particular cases and expressing disapproval when the FIU filed a police case after a large amount of money was transferred to former President Abdulla Yameen’s account.

Responding to the accusations at the meeting, Governor Naseer said that, after he was appointed in August 2017, he had prioritized strengthening the FIU’s work.

He detailed that he had found a consultant at the IMF conference and handed over the consultant’s CV to Ashraf, who did not provide any support and failed to complete an audit report. Naseer said that he dismissed Ashraf as the head of FIU after checking his performance for four months and that he was transferred to a similar position.

Naseer also said that they created a database to improve FIU’s work, and that one of the reasons for dismissing Ashraf was that he was allegedly involved in the leaking of the database information before the presidential election, by instructing a bot to transfer the information to a particular group on Telegram.

He said that he has requested an investigation on the matter and also accused Ashraf of accessing FIU documents months after he was dismissed.