FAM requests police to provide confiscated documents as part of efforts to recover missing funds

Normalization Committee has requested the police to provide some documents required to progress ongoing efforts to recover funds that went missing from Football Association of Maldives (FAM).

The biggest task mandated over the five-member committee appointed by FIFA to reform the association heavily surrounded with fraud and money laundering allegations was to locate and recover the misplaced funds.

Speaking at the press briefing initiated by the Normalization Committee on Wednesday to divulge information on progress of the work, Ismail Siman, a Committee Member, said relevant documents will be inspected and scrutinized, after which a decision on how to proceed will be reached.

At the briefing, Committee Chairperson Ahmed Zuhoor had further revealed that no records nor documents were available when the committee assumed leadership of the association.

Police had raided two FAM headquarters on two different occasions and confiscated documents at the premise as part of their investigation into allegations that the former management had misused funds obtained from FIFA and AFC.

Therefore, a request has been lodged at the police to divulge information from the confiscated documents that may help further the committee's efforts to locate the missing funds, said Siman.

"Maldives Police Service is currently in possession of documents, especially those related to criminal activity. Regardless, we are liaising with the Police Service to review which documents are relevant to our efforts to recover the funds in compliance with our mandate. And then we can decide how to proceed after we obtain the documents. Whether in a contextual basis. Will reach a decision after reviewing them," explained Sinan.

Several court orders have also been delivered to FAM over large sums of payments overdue to external parties. Siman, who is also a law practitioner revealed that the appeal period for most of these cases have also now expired.

The committee is now attempting to identify any avenues that allows them to appeal the ruling delivered by Civil Court earlier this month to settle an amount of MVR 1.5 million in compensation to State Trading Organization (STO), Simon revealed.

The committee is negotiating with the creditors to reach a consensus on an easier alterative for resolving the payments in cases where filing an appeal is not possible, added Simon, who is also educated in the finance sector.

"Some cases are at a point of finality or closed, therefore there is no way for us to further review the cases at court," he explained.

"Our approach towards such cases [where further appeals are not possible] is, as the Chairperson [Zuhoor] said, to negotiate with creditors and find an easier procedure for restructuring."