The 2020 Male' City Council audit has shown that quotations were made from related businesses for the city council that benefited specific individuals, with details regarding generated revenue not matching as well.
Yesterday, the council publicized an audit report covering Shifa Mohamed's term as Mayor of Male'.
According to the report, singular tasks were divided into separate ones.
As an example, the 46 payment vouchers under MVR 35,000 taken as a sample totaled MVR 1.3 million. Quotations for 23 of those vouchers were acquired separately, totaling MVR 656,162, as per the audit.
Within those samples, quotations for 27 of the vouchers were acquired from related businesses, from two stores from the same company or via separate stores from the same shareholders, as was stated in the audit. The cost of the 27 quotations are MVR 732,043.
The audit highlighted that the daily ledger that outlines revenue details compiled by the road section for the road construction board service and the revenue details for the 2020 yearly report did not match.
Other details of note in the audit:
- Did not ensure assets were up to date.
- Revenue report received by the department in 2020 was not prepared daily.
- Registry and mortgage documents for 2020 were not available.
- Failure in maintaining the registry in revenue received by the council as per Public Finance regulations.
While recommendations were given to amend all of the above, the audit further states that as no information was received regarding the 2020 budget control, it is unclear as to whether expenditure from the budget was as per the approved budget, and whether budget control was done as per regulations.
While an audit report was publicized when Shifa was the Mayor of Male', a corruption allegation was made against her as well. The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) requested the Prosecutor General's Office (PG) to file charges against Male' City Mayor Shifa Mohamed over allegations of corruption regarding the development of a park in the South-East coast of Male', now known as the Lonuziyaaraiy Park. However, the PG office sent the case back to the ACC.
