Embattled ACC members resign

The members of the Anti-Corruption Commission tendered their resignation on Monday, after a no-confidence motion was passed against them by the Parliament’s Independent Institutions Committee. 

ACC had three members; the commission’s president Mariyam Shiuna, vice president Fathimath Anoola, and Aishath Abdulla.  

ACC’s media spokesperson told Sun all three members tendered their resignation on Monday afternoon. 

Independent Institutions Committee had recommended a vote of no-confidence motion on the Parliament floor against the ACC members on Sunday evening, based on findings of a performance audit, which uncovered the commission had over 16,000 pending cases.    

The committee highlighted 10 main issues uncovered in the audit in its report.   

The committee said that while ACC completed investigations into 61 percent of corruption cases, only one percent of the cases were sent for prosecution.   

The committee said the commission had a huge backlog, and takes a long time to forward cases to the Prosecutor General’s Office even after completing investigations. They also said that a lot of the cases sent to the Prosecutor General’s Office were sent back to the commission.   

The committee said in its report that the pace of the commission’s work was unusually slow, and that many of the funds stolen from the state remains unrecovered. The committee found only MVR 11,000 in funds were recovered by the end of October.  

Two of the commission’s members – Ibrahim Shakeel and Ali Ashraf – had resigned after the committee began its review.