'Zero Tolerance' no longer

On 9 October, President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih cancelled the suspension of Minister of Youth, Sports and Community Empowerment Ahmed Mahloof. According to the Spokesperson at the President's Office Mohamed Mabrook Azeez, Mahloof's suspension was cancelled due to changes to the earlier procedures of taking action against anyone from the time their case is sent to the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO), under President Solih's zero-tolerance policy. 

Azeez confirmed to local media that action will now be taken once the PGO makes a decision to press charges against an individual in public office. The spokesperson said that the change had been brought because some of the cases sent to the PGO took considerable time before a decision was made. On a side note, the Minister was suspended with full salary and benefits, and is reported to have been 'unofficially involved' in the running of the ministry. 

The PGO's response on the Mahloof case so far has been that it is still to receive additional information requested from state institutions on the case, and that the office will not make a decision on charging the minister until the information has been received. The nature of the information requested remains a mystery, as well as the reasons as to why these state institutions have not been able to provide the said information even four months after the minister was initially suspended this time around. Mainstream media has also reported that a team is currently in the UK to obtain important information related to the case, although why a team with no jurisdiction in the UK had to go all the way to seek that information also remains a mystery. 

The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) had sent the minister's case to the PGO on 9 June 2021, exactly four months prior to the date his suspension was cancelled. The investigation had been carried out by a joint task force between the ACC, the Maldives Police Service (MPS) and the Presidential Commission on Asset Recovery. The ACC said that its joint investigation had found evidence that Minister Mahloof had received USD33,000 for his vote on the Special Economic Zone Bill during his time as the Member of Parliament for Galolhu Dhekunu, and to remain with the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM). It added that Mahloof, who had been in Malaysia at the time of the vote on the bill, had flown in on 27 August, 2014, just for the vote – which to a layman's eyes is not a major issue, as this has perhaps been the practice many times over, in parties' efforts to ensure votes for bills they deem important. However, allegedly receiving bribes in return for votes is of course an issue. The funds were allegedly transferred by former Vice President Ahmed Adeeb from what he had embezzled through the Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Corporation (MMPRC). 

Mahloof has said that the vote he gave in parliament had been in accordance with a three-line whip from the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), of which he had been a member at the time, and as such, there had been nothing out of the ordinary about his vote. 

In July 2021, Mahloof, in a Clubhouse chatroom alleged that the case against him was politically motivated, by a group within the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) that included sitting members of parliament. He said that 'since he had been attacked for political reasons, he would retaliate politically as well,' although he did not specify 'how' he was going to 'retaliate politically.' He alleged that the 'attack' was related to elections at sports associations and that the associations themselves had praised him for being the first minister to conduct the elections without any bias or politics involved. 

In August 2021, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the Sri Lankan Government had raised issues with how statements were obtained from a Sri Lankan national, who had been the accountant at SOF Private Limited, the intermediary company used to shuffle the MMPRC money. The prosecution's case is based on statements from former Vice President Ahmed Adeeb, and the statement of the accountant. Following the Ministry's concerns over the issue, the President's Office has instructed the Presidential Commission on Asset Recovery to investigate and ascertain the facts behind the claims. The Foreign Ministry's letter was reportedly in response to a request by the President to the ministry, following a letter by Mahloof to President Solih, alleging irregularities in how the statement had been obtained, as well as claims that there are no chatlogs of conversations between him and the former Vice President. He also alleged that the chain-of-custody of the said chatlogs was incomplete and hence it could not be used against him. 

Mahloof had been suspended in relation to the MMPRC case earlier as well. President Solih had suspended him on 14 February 2019 after his name appeared on the list of people who had received MMPRC funds, as published in an ACC report. After due investigations and the ACC confirming that there was no ongoing investigation against him, the Minister's suspension was cancelled two months later, on 16 April. Mahloof had at the time claimed that he had conducted dollar exchange transactions with SOF Private Limited, but had not known at the time that the company was laundering funds embezzled from the MMPRC. At being suspended, he had vowed to resign if charges were raised against him but claimed that his name was on a 'political list.' 

For a government that came to power based on a pledge of zero-tolerance, and one which had as it's 100-day pledges to investigate and bring to justice those involved in embezzling funds from the public coffers, there appears to be too many numerous incidences of incomplete investigations, chains of command and lacking information in major investigations it has carried out to date.  Is Mahloof really a 'sacrificial lamb' as he claims? Are our institutions so weak that it cannot professionally investigate allegations of embezzlement of a mere USD33,000, or are there other forces at play that the public knows are there but cannot put its fingers on?