Malé, Maldives – It has been reported that Maldives Police Service is unable to extradite Ahmed Moosa (Ammaty), the Managing Director of Sea Life Global – a company which duped 280 tenants into paying millions in booking fees of an apartment complex which was never built – due to an ongoing investigation in to him in Sri Lanka, where he was arrested under an Interpol red notice.
Local media outlet ‘Sun’ quoted an official of the Police to state that it is yet to be known when Ammaty, who was arrested in February, would be extradited to the Maldives, given the ongoing investigation against him in Sri Lanka. However the nature of the investigation was not detailed. It was also added that the process of bringing him back to the country has also not yet begun.
He is still under the custody of the Sri Lankan police, regarding an investigation into him there.
An official of Maldives Police Service
The red notice on Mohamed was issued during April of 2019, after the Commissioner of Police Mohamed Hameed announced the decision to seek Interpol’s assistance on 18th April 2019, in order to have Mohamed, who fled to Sri Lanka, brought in for questioning regarding his connection to fraud and theft.
The SeaLife housing fraud case, which was the subject of the biggest class-action lawsuit in Maldivian history at the time, announced a 3,000 apartment housing complex in 2015 after being contracted by the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) in 2014, and had gotten 280 tenants to pay a booking fee of MVR 50,000 and more per tenant. However, the complex was never built and none of the tenants were reimbursed at the time, of the more than MVR 14 million, taken as down payment.
203 tenants of the SeaLife housing complex sued SeaLife Global, HDC and the Ministry of Economic Development, of which HDC initially estimated that the cost of compensation by HDC to the tenants which came forward, would exceed MVR 23 million.
