Maldives Immigration has revealed that the two expatriates wanted in connection to drug-related investigations were deported during 2018.

Following the Prosecutor General’s office (PGO) having sought a probe into the deportation of two expatriates at a time their passports were ordered to be seized by the Criminal Court, at the National Integrity Commission on Sunday, Immigration Controller Ahmed ‘Hanafee’ Hussain highlighted that the incident occurred during November 2018.

In a Tweet, Hussain stated that the two expatriates were deported during November last year and that the authorities have the department’s full cooperation into such investigations.

The PGO revealed that the two expatriates were deported despite the Criminal Court having ordered to seize their passports in connection to two cases of drug smuggling, ongoing at the court.

RaajjeMV was unable to attain a comment for details regarding the drug-related cases from relevant authorities at the time of publishing, however, RaajjeMV understands that this is the first case filed by the PGO at the commission.

The National Integrity Commission is tasked with the investigation of unlawful acts of law enforcement agencies.

This comes at a time authorities earlier revealed that there is a total of 144,607 expatriate workers in the country out of the which 63,000 are undocumented, and launched a regularization programme on 19 September.

The government warned of action that would be taken against undocumented workers who did not register under the programme. The programme was a result of President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih’s decision to implement a policy on strengthening foreign labor regulations and to address the issue of an increasing number of cases in employment of migrant workers, illegally.

Further, the policy highlights ways to reinforce regulations on ways to handle illegal employment as well as the issuance of work permits and formulation of a ‘National Task-force on Issues Related to Migrant Workers’.