Body worn camera acquisition to firm with shareholders linked to firm that did not meet requirements

It has been revealed police awarded a contract in 2022 for body-worn cameras to a company whose shareholders also hold shares in the firm that initially won the bid but was later disqualified by the tender board for ineligibility.

The 200 body-worn cameras brought for frontline officers were put into use on 13th February 2022 during then-Police Commissioner Mohamed Hameed's leadership.

According to the information during the Parliament's Public Accounts Committee Sub Committee's case investigation into the Police company Polco, the initial task for acquiring 1,400 body-worn cameras. The project was awarded to Zetta Enterprises Pvt. Ltd. under Single Procurement regulations.

After looking into the matter, the Tender Board later concluded that the company did not meet the proposed requirements.

The Tender Board said that even though Zetta Enterprises submitted a supplier credit letter, the company did not have the capabilities to conduct such a project when looking at their financial statistics. As Zetta Enterprises is not a company that supplied security and electronic instruments, the Tender Board decided that the company does not have the financial ability to proceed with such a project.

The Tender Board had highlighted that there was conflicting dates in the procurement starting date and the date which Zetta had begun trial work in acquiring the cameras.

With the National Tender Board's decision, the police administration has gazetted the work to acquire 200 body-worn cameras once again. The announcement was made during former President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih's administration in October 2021. Three companies had applied, with the police awarding the project to Zetta Technologies Maldives.

Zetta Technologies is a company linked to shareholders of Zetta Enterprises.

The Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) had looked into a case regarding the company that was given the project. At the time, the ACC had ruled that there was no corruption in play.

The Chair of the Public Accounts Sub Committee and Deputy Speaker of Parliament Ahmed Nazim has said today that the camera acquisition timeline is very clear, and that it is clear that the project was given to a company with the same shareholders as the company that did not meet the requirements.

Even though it was estimated that MVR 48 million would initially be spent on the acquisition, the expenditure went up to MVR 66 million once the work had finished. The Deputy Speaker stated that around an additional MVR 18 million was spent beyond the estimated amount.

"As per our observations, an agency was found after Zetta Technologies had begun their processes. The justification for buying 200 cameras and then waiting to buy the rest of the 1,200 from the total of 1,400 cameras was that they had already bought 200 cameras, and so they have to buy 1,200 cameras of the same brand," said Nazim. 

As per the information that was publicized by the Public Accounts Committee, while Zetta had begun the work to buy Axon body-worn cameras in 2021, the company had gotten exclusive rights in April 2022. So it can be concluded that they had begun the process in buying the cameras before they had gotten exclusive rights.

The information gathered by the Sub Committee shows that while the police had awarded the project to Zetta Technologies on 27th November 2022 for MVR 66 million, the police administration had given the company MVR 67 million for the project.