Male, November 28 (EFE): Former Maldives president Abdulla Yameen was on Thursday sentenced to five years in jail after a court convicted him in a money laundering case.
Yameen, 60, who lost a presidential election in September last year to Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, was found guilty of benefiting from the so-called biggest graft scandal in the island's history as $90 million were allegedly laundered from a state-owned tourism board.
According to the prosecutors, a private company, SOF, was used to siphon off the funds of the Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Corporation. The company had then allegedly transferred $1 million to Yameen's account at the Maldives Islamic Bank.
The board had generated the money through the lease of islands and lagoons for the development of tourist holiday resorts.
Judge Ali Rasheed said Yameen had invested the money despite being warned by the country’s anti-graft commission of how it was acquired.
Besides the minimum prison sentencing as per the anti-money laundering act, Yameen was also ordered to pay $5 million within the next six months as fine.
Prosecutors charged the former president of lying to the Anti-Corruption Commission as Yameen had not returned the money as ordered but instead carried out profitable financial transactions with the money.
Yameen has denied all the charges. He claimed he had transferred the money as per the agreement with the anti-graft commission. During the trial, he argued that the money sent to him was for his Progressive Party of Maldives and denied he knew that the money was embezzled from state funds.
Outside the police headquarters in January this year after his questioning, he told reporters that $1 million were transferred to an escrow account of the corruption watchdog, but the police found that the money came from Yameen's other bank account.
The former president's bank accounts were frozen with more than $6.5 million in US dollars and local currency as police launched a probe into campaign contributions and $1 million from SOF.
Yameen, under whose mandate the island nation strengthened its ties with China, was accused by his detractors of abuse of power and corruption shortly after his unexpected defeat in the presidential elections at the end of 2018.
