Thinadhoo mayor faces new case as ACC seeks charges over land allocation

The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has asked the Prosecutor General’s Office to charge Thinadhoo Mayor Saud Ali and three former councillors over the allocation of land to a private company without a public bidding process.

According to information released by the ACC on Sunday, the case concerns land allocated for a takeaway food business during an earlier term of the Thinadhoo Island Council.

The ACC said it referred the case to the Prosecutor General’s Office this month, seeking charges against four people who were serving on the council at the time.

They are Saud Ali, who was then president of the Thinadhoo Island Council and is now the city’s mayor; former councillors Aminath Naseema, Ahumeema Ahmed and Aishath Liusha Zubair.

The ACC has asked prosecutors to charge the four with misuse of official position.

According to the commission, regulations governing the allocation of land for purposes other than residential use require land for industrial or commercial purposes to be allocated through a bidding process.

However, the ACC alleges that the council decided to allocate a plot to the company without opening it for bidding and signed an agreement for the land in violation of the regulations.

The commission said a further three plots were subsequently allocated to the same company.

The referral comes as Saud is already facing a separate criminal case relating to allegations that population information was misrepresented during the process of obtaining city status for Thinadhoo.

In that case, the Prosecutor General’s Office has charged Saud with knowingly issuing an invalid document and providing false information to an official authority. The allegations relate to documents submitted as part of the process to establish that Thinadhoo met the population requirement for city status.