Maldivian government seeks legal advice from former English Attorney General

Former English Attorney General Baroness Patricia Scotland was paid £7,500 per day by the Maldivian Government in return for legal advice, reported the Daily Mail, UK.

Baroness Scotland served in the Cabinet during the premiership of Gordon Brown.

According to the Daily Mail, it had seen leaked documents which said that Baroness Scotland advised the Maldivian government for a period of two weeks, for a total fee of some £75,000. In local currency, this is a sum totaling 1.8 million.

Baroness Scotland advised the government of President Dr. Mohamed Waheed Hassan Manik on the issue of CMAG, Commonwealth trying to take action against the Maldives. According to the Daily Mail, Baroness Scotland travelled during her service period to the Maldives and met with representatives of the political parties as well.

Maldivian Attorney General Aishath Azima Shukoor today confirmed the news, and said that “it was nothing new and done in a perfectly legal manner”. She said that the Maldivian government had, at previous instances, sought advice from international legal consultants, and that the fees paid in this case were paid out of a coded budgetary item.

“It is not a novel thing for the Maldivian government to seek legal advice in this way. Previously, the government sought such advice on the issue of Air Maldives bankruptcy. The Government is currently employing international legal consultants in the issue of GMR filing legal cases with foreign tribunals as well. The £75,000 spent for obtaining legal advice (from Baroness Scotland) is an expenditure out of Attorney General Office budget, and there is an item in the budget for such expenditure”, said Azima.

Azima also said that the amount spent to obtain legal advice from former UK Attorney General is “not an unreasonably large sum”. She said that it is not unreasonably high even in comparison with the rates charged by local legal consultants.

Azima also said that the government had previously shared information about seeking international legal advice on the issue of CMAG.

Baroness Scotland also issued a Statement confirming the fact that she delivered legal advice to the Maldivian government. She said that the advice was given within the ambit of the law, and that nothing inappropriate occurred in the matter.

The Daily Mail, in its news piece on the issue, erroneously claims that the “first freely-elected president Mohamed ‘Anni’ Nasheed was ousted by his deputy, Mohammed Waheed Hassan” during February. The news item also implied that the current government is the result of a coup, and that it is repressive.

“That stand is the result of a combination of several things; Daily Mail does not know that Nasheed was a lying, inefficient, opportunistic man who violated human rights in this country. They do not have any idea about what happened on the 7th of February, and got their facts all wrong”, commented a local legal expert. “Look at the claim that Nasheed’s first action as president was demolishing a torture centre in the Maldives. Where was that torture centre? When did Nasheed demolish any such centre, or any jail for that matter? Indeed, it was Nasheed who arrested a judge, who was merely accused of misconduct, by employing the military, in front of his crying and pleading kids and wife, and sent him to an enforced disappearance”, added the expert. He also said that “Not Baroness Scotland’s act of giving legal advice to the Maldivian government, but the attitude of Daily Mail, and the conservative MP who criticized her are disgusting”.