Finance Ministry refutes any wrongdoing in ventilator scandal

Finance Minister Ibrahim Ameer has said that the Finance Ministry had not approved the advance payment of 90 percent without a guarantee by the Health Ministry to a Dubai based company for the procurement of ventilators to the Maldives.

The Health Ministry had paid 90 percent (MVR 30.91 million) of the payment as advanced payment without a guarantee to Dubai based Executors General Trading to procure 75 ventilators to the Maldives to increase the country’s capacity to treat COVID-19 patients.

The dealings were revealed in an audit report by the Auditor General into the expenditure of the Health Ministry, released in mid-August. Multiple accounts misconduct were noted from the report, which has placed several senior Health Ministry officials in hot water.

Finance Ministry officials including the Minister was summoned to the Parliament’s Committee on Public Accounts meetings, which is conducting a formal inquiry into the matter. 

Minister Ameer, in today’s meeting, said that the bid committee of the Health Ministry should have ensured the technical capabilities of the company before it awarded the contract, despite the approval by the Finance Ministry for the procurement of ventilators under the single-source policy, which the Ministry had permitted based on the need for urgency at the time. The Minister said that his Ministry was also looking into the matter after the revelations of the report showed that the right procedure had not been followed. 

He said that the Health Ministry had informed the Finance Ministry on April 1 that the ventilators could not be procured without an advanced payment of 75 percent.

The Finance Ministry then released funds for the payment based upon the request through the public payment system. After another request was made for 15 percent of the total payment for shipping, the Ministry then requested the Health Ministry to arrange so that the payment can be made upon the last shipment of ventilators. 

This payment was also later released by the Finance Ministry after the Health Ministry informed that the company was “recommended” by the World Health Organization (WHO). 

Finance Minister Ameer said that the Ministry had not permitted to overlook the obtainment of performance guarantees, despite the urgency of the situation. 

“To speed up things, easements were introduced for payment options and administrative procedures. However, other procedures are still to be followed. Despite this, it was not permitted to overlook the payment guarantee under the public account regulations,"

"The guarantee must be obtained because the Finance Ministry had not introduced easements to overlook this. I would also note that if it had not been obtained by now, it should be obtained even now.” Said the Minister.

The Minister said that a circular had been issued mandating requests sent for the public payment system to be in compliance with the public account regulations. He noted that the Ministry was not an investigative body and that instead of centralizing financial procedures, things were run by appointing a financial controller to every Ministry.

This meant that it was not up to his Ministry to guarantee the obtainment of a performance guarantee, but it was the responsibility of the financial controller of the Health Ministry to ensure that the performance guarantee was obtained, said the Minister.