The High Court, in a remand hearing yesterday regarding corruption allegations against former Immigration Controller Shamman Waheed, questioned why the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) was not involved in the case when prosecutors requested Shamman to be remanded at the Criminal Court.

Shamman is currently remanded pending the outcome of his trial, accused of being involved with several other Immigration officers, in the release of an expatriate from Immigration's detention and taking MVR 500,000 from the individual before transporting the funds to Shamman's residence.

Today's legal hearing addressed the request by Shamman's legal representatives to quash the Criminal Court's order to hold Shamman in remand for the entire duration of the trial, as well as an additional 15 days prior to that. His team maintained that these sections were unlawful.

At the first hearing today, Shamman's lawyer sought to quash the order citing that the police's request to investigate and detain Shahman is unlawful. His lawyer, Noorul Salam, said Shamman had been remanded in custody for 15 days on corruption charges.

In the Maldives, ACC has jurisdiction over corruption related matters. If there is such an allegation in a case, that part of the case is conducted as a joint investigation. If there is only an allegation of corruption, only the ACC can investigate the case.

However, Noorul Salam said that this was not the case in Shamman's situation. When police went to court seeking an arrest warrant, ACC was not part of the investigation.

His lawyer argued that the police alone could not go to court seeking to arrest Shamman on the charges in the case. Such procedures must be followed and cannot be ignored, he said.

“This is not the way things were ever done on corruption charges,” the lawyer said.

When the remand order was first issued against Shamman, he was only accused of corruption but was later accused of misappropriation of another person’s property and money laundering. Police are now investigating these allegations as well.

Responding, the state prosecutor for the case said higher courts have held that the police can investigate only money laundering offences when allegations of money laundering and corruption are involved.

He said it is best to explain all the allegations against a person when arresting them, but that it does not mean police would seek to press charges on all the accusations when seeking to arrest the individual. If there is an allegation of corruption, police would inform the ACC and if a joint investigation or a separate investigation is required, the commission would decide that, the prosecutor also said.

The prosecutor said police did not request Shamman's arrest to investigate corruption but that he was informed of the other allegations, out of which the arrest was sought for money laundering.

"When he was taken to [the] remand [hearing], it was stated that there are both money laundering and corruption charges [against him], but that [we] are only investigating money laundering. However, if there are corruption allegations at that point, we mentioned that those allegations remain when we requested for the arrest or remand," the prosecutor said.

According to him, although the police do not have the power to investigate corruption, they can also looking into the corruption if it is connected to a money laundering case they are investigating.

As such, the prosecution asked the court to declare the arrest warrant issued within the law.

Due to the allegations against Shamman, he was removed as Controller General of Immigration before his arrest.

Police had earlier said that the expatriate from whom Shamman and his colleagues allegedly took money from was taken into Immigration's custody from a guesthouse operation. It is also alleged that the money was taken from the foreigner by three Immigration officers who met the foreigner on the road to collect the money following his release. They then took the money to Shamran’s house, according to the investigation.

The operation was not conducted by the task force assigned to search foreigners and their associates, police also said.