Many challenges in investigating corruption allegations against government corporations: ACC

Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) of the Maldives has said that there were major challenges in investigating alleged cases of corruption against government owned companies, as the Government Finance Act did not make such investigations mandatory.

Answering questions asked at the Committee on Independent Institutions of the People’s Majlis, Hassan Luthufy, President of ACC said that there was no regulation which obliged government corporations to administer themselves in a uniform manner, posing another challenge for the ACC to look into possible corruption. He also said that this issue had been brought to the attention of the Ministry of Finance.

Muavviz Rasheed, Vice President of ACC said that despite the challenges, ACC had continued to investigate cases of corruption involving government corporations. He also said that ACC had decided to obtain necessary information from those corporations by referring cases to the court, if there was no other choice.

President Luthufy noted that a floodgate of cases referred to ACC was another challenge, and that lack of human resources meant that ACC had many difficulties in coping up with the load. He said that while 254 cases were submitted to ACC during the year 2009, this figure rose to 917 in 2010 and had been at 546 by the end of July 2011.

Luthufy also said that ACC followed a policy of initiating investigations at times, in addition to merely filing cases submitted from outside. As such, 63 cases in 2010 and 27 cases by the end of July 2011 were initiated by ACC based on information revealed in the media.

Luthufy said that 75 cases in 2009, 257 in 2010 and 89 so far this year, had been rejected and that reasons for the decisions had been published in reports.