The Auditor General explained the POLCO situation in detail.
The Auditor General's Office said yesterday that police welfare company, POLCO, does not have documents relating to the corruption allegations levelled against the company in the development of the police flats.
The revelation was made by Auditor General Hussain Niyaazi, who was summoned to the Public Finance Committee of the Parliament yesterday over the audit report issued last month regarding the "Blues Housing" flats developed in Hulhumalé Phase 1.
Replying to questions raised by members in the committee, Niyaazi said the audit office had worked to investigate the bidding and evaluation efforts of the police flats project.
He said the office also met police's management and detailed that they were told that the relevant documents were not available due to a problem with a POLCO server.
"In the scope of the audit, we included how the bidding process of the project went. However, the project started in 2013. Then when we met with the management of POLCO, they said they did not have documents anymore, because of a server issue," Niyaazi said.
He explained that they tried to check the documents through the Maldivian Gazette. However, the documents were not available there either.
Because of this, it is unclear how the process went, he said.
"So, we don't really know how the evaluation of the bids went. So, we looked at the gazette. It wasn't in the gazette [either]," he said.
However POLCO send in some letters relating to the matter after the report was published, Niyaazi said, adding that that they did not known how the bidding process was conducted up until the audit report was published.
He further explained that the office mentioned the issue in the audit report because they believed that it should be looked into further by the investigating agencies.
"So we believe the investigators need to look at how it went," he said.
During the meeting, representatives of the Auditor General's Office also presented a slideshow on the issues related to the POLCO flats.
According to the audit report, MVR 1.6 billion was spent on the flats at a loss of MVR 355 million.
The project, which began on 23 June 23, 2013, was first awarded to a company called Noomadi. The project was awarded to the company, which was operating in Maldives at the time, under contractor financing. However, the agreement was canceled on 27 January, 2016 due to political challenges and lack of funds.
The second time, the project was awarded to a company called Island Expert. However, the company went bankrupt during the Covid-19 pandemic, which then led the project to be transferred to Amin Construction. Although the project was supposed to be finished by Amin Construction in 2022, they got extensions to complete the flats.
The audit found that the projects were awarded to these companies without considering their capability to fulfil the project's requirements.
Having spent nearly twice as much on the project than it should have, POLCO lacks the technical ability to execute such large-scale projects and also manipulated agreements to favour contractors, the audit report said. It further claimed that there was suspected fraud and corruption involved within the project's execution.
The audit found that the contracts worth MVR 628.7 million signed by POLCO were directly and indirectly affiliated with a specific entity. The entity is believed to have family ties to the representative of Noomadi, the managing director of Island Expert and the managing director of Dhe Koamas.
The case is now under investigation by the Anti Corruption Commission as an urgent matter.
Some 361, three-bedroom flats developed under the project were handed over last year.
Sign In
