Two former senior officials in the Maldives who were serving lengthy jail sentences for their part in a US$78 million corruption scandal that rocked the idyllic, archipelagic South Asian country are now free men.
Four days before stepping down as Maldives president, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih on Monday commuted the sentences of ed former Vice President Ahmed Adeeb and Abdulla Ziyath, former Managing Director of the Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Office (MMPRC), both of whom were indicted in the so-called MMPRC scandal.
The commutation freed the men from prison, but did not absolve them of guilt.
Adeeb had been sentenced to 20 years in prison and Ziyath to 32 years for their roles in the fraud, which involved $78 million in state money being embezzled through MMPRC and other private enterprises, as well as the company selling the country’s islands and lagoons, which OCCRP revealed in its 2018 “Paradise Leased” investigation.
The commutations were fiercely opposed by Transparency Maldives.
“This commutation is a blatant betrayal of the principles that underpin a just and accountable society and undermines efforts to combat corruption and kleptocracy,” the organization said in a statement. READ MORE FROM OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project).
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