Audit Report: MMPRC money transactions are not clear

Audit report for the year 2015 made public today states that the financial transactions of Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Corporation (MMPRC) is not clear enough for the Audit Office to give their opinion.

The report states that unclear statistics of the financial transactions – how the money came to the money and what happened to the money, made it so the office could not get full information for the audit report of year 2015.

Audit report of MMPRC states that even though the cost of the company’s assets is stated as MVR 7,113,853 there is no evidence to prove the cost as the actual cost. The report says that MMPRC did not keep a track on the cost pf assets and that they did not hold a physical verification process to check the actual price of the cost.

The report also states that the website of the company was used as a method to gain income to the company, but the track of the income received through the advertisements were not recorded.

The audit stated that statistics of MMPRC finance and the financial statistics of the companies they had businesses with were not compared as the company did not receive the financial statements of the companies, they traded with to ensure the trade receivable statistics of the company.

Moreover, the report says that the transaction receipts of the money received to the company by selling uninhabited islands of the Maldives are not clear. The financial statistics of the company for 2015 shows that MMPRC should receive MVR 1,030,981,200 by selling the islands.

However, the report notes that the company did not receive MVR 1,354,801,755 from the amount mentioned above by December of 2015. It also states that they did not provide the audit office with necessary documents to needed to verify the amount.

The audit report also notes that the amount of money in the accounts of MMPRC till the end of 2015 is not clear as the office was not provided with the company’s bank reconciliation statements for the audit.

It is also stated that the company did not keep track or written statements of advance payments received by the customers, the profit and costs of the company. The report says that they did not receive enough evidence to confirm these things.

Auditor General in the audit report stated that the office cannot give their opinion on the finance of MMPRC since there were not enough evidence and were not provided with enough information.

MVR 1.4 billion embezzlement scam within Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Corporation (MMPRC) is the biggest embezzlement case in the history of Maldives. Anti-Corruption Commission started their investigation on the case on August 27, 2015. The MVR 1.4 billion lost in the money laundering scandal is yet to be found.

Former Vice President and Minister of Tourism, Ahmed Adeeb Abdul Gafoor and former Managing Director of MMPRC, Abdulla Ziyath were imprisoned over the case and now transferred to house arrest.