Appeal reg. decision to unfreeze Yameen’s accounts: police given more time to prepare

An additional hearing is to be held in the state’s appeal case against the decision to unfreeze jailed former President Abdulla Yameen’s bank accounts.

A hearing in the case was held on Monday, and police will be given the opportunity to respond in the next one.

While the Criminal Court had issued the order to freeze Yameen’s accounts, High Court overturned the order after his team filed an appealed there. The state, in May 2019, appealed this at the Supreme Court.

After accepting the case, the country’s top court issued a temporary order for the former president’s bank accounts to remain frozen until it reaches a ruling in the case

Monday’s hearing in the case was the first one, with the new Supreme Court bench.

Police sought to freeze Yameen’s bank accounts in connection to the money laundering investigations against the former president.

While the purpose of this was to prevent Yameen from carrying out any transactions with the funds in his personal account, the state appealed the lower court decision after noting the possibility of loss of state of funds if not done.

Hence, it asked for an order to freeze his bank accounts in Maldives Islamic Bank (MIB) and Mauritius Commercial Bank (MCB).

Yameen’s team argued that the funds are being monitored by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), hence that there is no chance of it going missing.

While the presiding judge posed a number of questions to both the state and defence at Monday’s hearing, the bench decided to hold an additional hearing to give the police officers additional time to prepare.

However, a date for the hearing was not announced.

Yameen was sentenced to five years in prison in November 2019, after having been found guilty for laundering USD one million through the Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Corporation (MMPRC) via a private company Scores of Flair during his presidency,. The USD one million acquired as an acquisition cost for Vodamulaa island in Gaaf Alif atoll was deposited to Yameen’s private account, and while he was asked to transfer this to an escrow account opened by ACC, the funds transferred to this account were through a third party and not directly from Yameen’s account.