Former Economic Minister Fayyaz Ismail has been summoned to police to be questioned in the investigation into the allegations of corruption being raised against some staff of the Road Development Corporation (RDC).
While further details were not offered, Police Spokesperson Ahmed Shifan confirmed that Fayyaz, who also serves as Chairman of opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has been summoned to be present at the Police Headquarters at 15:00 hrs today.
Police are running the investigation in collaboration with the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) into suspected corruption within RDC during former President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih's administration.
In a press conference held on the matter on March 3, Police's Economic Crime Department stated that technical work was commenced as soon as the matter was first reported in September 2022. At the time, they said that although there were suspicions of involvement of a large number of government employees in the acts of corruption, involvement of three individuals had been confirmed to date.
The three persons had transacted MVR 14 million of the company's funds through their personal bank accounts. The Department said that one of these persons had had MVR 11 million deposited in their account, with the remaining two having MVR 1 million deposited in their accounts, each.
Head of Crime Investigations Command Police Superintendent Ahmed Nafiz said then investigations were also going into the fact that money had been deposited from these accounts to the accounts belonging to senior officials associated with then government.
Nafiz said that MVR 392,000 had been deposited into the account of another company associated with RDC. MVR 162,000 of these funds were deposited into the account of an individual with ties to the company.