The Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) raided Maldives Police Service's Police Welfare Corporation (POLCO) for a second time on Wednesday and seized more documents needed for their investigation.
An unnamed official told Mihaaru News that ACC raided the office based in Iskandharu Koshi. However, no comment from Police was available immediately.
POLCO is accused of corruption over apartments that were developed by the company for police officers to live in. The parliamentary Finance Committee's sub-committee said this week that some senior police officials were involved in the corruption. Having raised this concern, the committee members also questioned whether those officers could remain in office.
The committee's chairperson Dhiggaru MP Ahmed Nazim said the audit report indicated that assistant commissioners and deputy commissioners were also involved in the corruption.
"There are 16 important events in the first chart of the Auditor General's report. They [senior police officials] had participated in those stages [of corruption]. I believe [we] need to decide whether they should remain in office when the investigations continue," Nazim said in Sunday's meeting.
According to the audit report, the project's agreement was changed three times, adding MVR 122 million to the cost of the work and extending the completion date to 54 months. The project was initially awarded to Noomadi for MVR 580 million to be completed within two years. But by the time the work was completed, the project had cost MVR one billion.
Auditor General Hussain Niyazi quoted the police in the Finance Committee meeting as saying that a team from the Audit Office had met with police management but were informed that documents were no longer accessible due to a problem with POLCO's server.
"In the scope of the audit, we included how the bidding process of the project went. However, the project started in 2013. So, when we met with POLCO management, they said they do not have documents now due to a server issue," Niyaazi said.
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