Vital Polco docs missing due to server issues

Maldives Auditor General Hussain Niyaazy has revealed several vital documents of Police Cooperative Society (Polco) has been missing after a technical malfunction of its servers.

The Auditor General’s Office earlier in January released its report highlighting several discrepancies tied to ‘Blues Housing Project’; Polco’s housing initiative at Hulhumale’ Phase I.

Following this report, officials of Auditor General’s Office were summoned to the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee on Monday, February 10^th, for questioning.

While responding to questions raised by committee members, the Auditor General said they attempted to evaluate the bidding process for the housing initiative. Niyaazy said met with Polco’s management in relation to this as well.

“The project initiated in 2013, and when we met with Polco’s management, which claimed they did not possess documents related to the initiative anymore owing to service issues. So, we were unable to figure out how the bidding process was executed,” Niyaazy said.

After the Auditor General’s Office failed to acquire information from Polco, they attempted to seek it through the government’s Gazette, but to no avail. Niyaazy stressed it was important to assess the findings of relevant investigations into the matter, carried out by law enforcement.

Niyaazy said that Maldives Police Service had provided some documents related to the project after their audit was completed, which was still insufficient in providing any quantifiable information related to the project’s bidding process.

Audit office in its report highlighted the project cost more than MVR 1 billion, with an excess of MVR 354.7 million spent on it.

Polco faces allegations of corruption and mismanagement in the project, while the Commissioner of Police Ali Shujau earlier said they will submit these complaints to the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) for further investigation.