Maldives: massive corruption at the top of the Maldives government exposed

[Ghost Dog]

... A new documentary, Stealing Paradise, provides an unprecedented insight into how international corruption is carried out. The story is told through data obtained from three of former Vice President Ahmed Adeeb's smartphones and dozens of confidential documents. It also features secretly recorded confessions of three men who embezzled millions and delivered the stolen cash on the orders of the president and his deputy.

The programme finds that the president's ministers and aides have plotted to launder up to $1.5bn through the South Asian nation's central bank, with the help of secretive businessmen from Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. They planned to fly in cash at up to $100m at a time, pass it through the Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) and transfer it back out...

... The former vice president's phone messages expose serious abuses of power. Ahmed Adeeb ordered the police commissioner to "blast" a TV station that had already been burned down in 2013. He also conspired with police to "light up" a government office housing 200 members of staff. The target of the attack was Niyaz Ibrahim, then auditor-general investigating the vice president's corruption...

... The testimony also suggests the length of former President Mohamed Nasheed's 13-year terrorism sentence was determined directly by the president... Sources and text message conversations reveal the Maldives judiciary is far from independent. Senior judges have received money and luxury flats and meet regularly with the president and his deputy, who meddle in high-profile cases and judicial appointments...

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/09/exclusive-maldives-president-corruption-revealed-160904110226846.html

The documentary:

Follow at Maldives Independent:

The police have raided the Maldives Independent office in Malé with a court warrant over an alleged coup plot, hours after an explosive Al Jazeera corruption exposé was released on YouTube.

The highly-anticipated documentary Stealing Paradise features an interview with Zaheena Rasheed, the editor of this publication, along with leading figures from the opposition and former members of watchdog bodies...

... Shahinda Ismail, whose Maldives Democracy Network shares the floor with the offices of MI, called the incident an intimidation tactic by the government. “Compared to the seriousness of the allegations, the search was very superficial and was over within minutes. It seems to me that it was directed at the people, not the place they shared,” she said, referring to the editor of Maldives Independent, who is currently out of the country.

Over last week, this publication has been repeatedly targeted by certain sections of the local media “for its involvement” in the making of the documentary. Will Jordan, the Al Jazeera producer, was previously the editor of Minivan News in 2007 before it was rebranded to Maldives Independent in 2015...

http://maldivesindependent.com/politics/police-raid-maldives-independent-office-over-coup-plot-126418