Parliament to share ACC's flat list with former flat committee heads

Parliament Committee on Independent Institutions on Wednesday decided to share the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC)'s list of flats with the heads of the former flat committee.

During the meeting, Baarah MP Ahmed Abdulla proposed sharing the ACC's flat list with former Planning Ministry State Minister Akram Kamaluddin and Senior Executive Director Mohamed Arif.

During the meeting, committee chair and Addu Meedhoo MP Rozaina Adam said that while the senior officials of the former flat committee are summoned for tomorrow's meeting on the Gedhoruveriya housing scheme flats, they have not received the flat list prepared by the ACC, and hence it would be difficult for them to be answerable according to the proposal by MP Abdulla, she said.

"This committee has already obtained the information [ACC flat list]. Despite it being confidential information, I believe it should be shared with those who are coming tomorrow," Rozaina said.

"If we are to ask them questions about this, they need to have this information on hand to answer. However, confidential information can only be shared with a third party once the committee approves of it."

Along with the flat list prepared by the ACC, the commission submitted a letter to Parliament requesting that the confidentiality of the list be maintained as the matter is still under investigation.

While members of the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) and The Democrats in the Independent Institutions Committee supported sharing the list only with Akram and Arif, members of the ruling People's National Congress (PNC) opposed it.

The committee today decided to share the ACC flat list with the former flat committee by a vote of five out of eight members present at the meeting.

The ACC has investigated allegations of major inconsistencies in the allocation of the first 4,000 flats under the former President Ibrahim Mohammed Solih administration's housing scheme. Based on the findings of the ongoing investigation, the ACC said that the former government had decided to give flats to many people who did not meet the eligibility criteria.

The ACC has also compiled a list of those who are eligible for the flats and those who are not. The list has also been shared with the Housing Ministry.

Senior officials of the ACC and the Housing Ministry have been summoned several times by the Parliament's Committee on Independent Institutions and the Committee on National Development and Heritage. The Committee on Independent Institutions, which met last week, decided to jointly probe the matter. The two committees will also summon senior officials of ACC, Housing Ministry, and the former flat committee for the first meeting to be held tomorrow.

Following two months of investigation, the ACC found that 60 percent of the 4000 listed recipients had not met the eligibility criteria. The recipients devoid of any faults were 20.7 percent while 19.7 percent of the applications had misinformation in their forms despite passing the criteria.