Malé, Maldives – Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), today, requested the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) to prosecute former Minister of Home Affairs for misuse of official authority under Section 513 (b) of Penal Code of Maldives (Act no: 9/2014).
ACC is seeking to prosecute Umar Naseer for awarding a government contract to procure electronic monitoring tags to a company affiliated with the former Home Minister in 2015.
Naseer is accused of manipulating government protocols during the procurement process.
ACC states that since two shareholders of Stelwart Maldives Pvt Ltd that won the bid are also business partners of the former Home Minister creating a conflict of interest under the Public Financial Regulations (PFR) of the Maldives (Regulation no.: 2017/R-20).
Further, Naseer was also the chair of of the technical committee formed to evaluate the trial by Stelwart Maldives Pvt Ltd. Naseer also signed a letter to the Finance Ministry advising to assign an advance of MVR 500,000 to Stelwart Maldives Pvt Ltd based only on trial evaluation.
With this, the ACC has requested to prosecute the former cabinet minister.
Umar Naseer denies any wrongdoing, stating that the procurement process was conducted with the clearance by Ministry of Finance and ACC. He added that the current charges are levied against him because the electronic tagging is the most successful anti crime campaign to date in the Maldives.
