Two senior officials of Tender Board to face corruption charges regarding purchase of cars

Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) has submitted a case to Prosecutor General’s (PG) Office alleging corruption charges against Finance Ministry’s former Director General - Tender Evaluation Section Saamee Ageel and Deputy Director General - National Budget Formulation and Analysis Section and former Chairman of Tender Evaluation Board Ali Arif.

The case submitted last Thursday states that an agreement was signed between Finance Ministry and winner of the bid on 6 December 2010 regarding supply of cars to the government, and Finance Ministry accepted and paid for five cars which do not fulfill the requirements mentioned in this agreement, supplied by the company which won the bid.

ACC’s investigations into this matter revealed corrupt dealings between the company and the Ministry’s Saamee Ageel and Ali Arif, conducted for the benefit of the company.

ACC said that in order to settle the payment for the imported cars, Sami Ageel had granted permission to release money to the supplier through the LC opened at the bank for this transaction by signing two documents sent by the bank, requesting for this permission.

This money was released without the permission of Finance Ministry’s Property Section, which had decided that the payment should not be settled before resolving the issue that the cars provided by the company were not of the model specified in the agreement, and did not meet the technical specifications mentioned in the agreement.

ACC also said that while the full payment of Rf 2,898,000 had been paid for the five cars to the company involved, the company had failed to find solutions to the problems associated with the cars.