Ex-VP Adeeb allowed to travel overseas

Former Vice President Ahmed Adeeb Abdul Gafoor has been granted permission by the Maldives Correctional Service to travel overseas for medical treatment.

The decision of the Correctional Service’s Medical Board comes after Adeeb was hospitalized last week, for what his party, the Maldives Third-Way Democrats (MTD) called “a serious and life-threatening neurological condition”.

MTD said Adeeb was diagnosed with the condition after three years of solitary confinement, between 2015 to 2018.

Adeeb, once the right-hand man of former President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom, had been sentenced to 20 years in prison in October 2020, in connection to the Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Corporation (MMPRC) embezzlement and money laundering scandal.

He had pled guilty to seven charges under a plea deal with the state, which reduced the charges against him from 30.

Prosecutor General Hussain Shameem had commented back then that investigators had collected enough evidence against Adeeb to press more than 150 charges, which would put him behind bars for 806 years.

After the plea dead, Adeeb served as a state witness in Yameen’s trial.

Despite the prison sentence against him, Adeeb has been under home confinement since 2020, based on medical grounds.