Manday’s appeal to recover seized valued possessions rejected by court

The appeal submitted by Hassan Mamdhooh (Manday) to recover MVR 7 million worth of items seized by the state from one of his apartments as part of the investigation into the fraud in the sale of apartments from K-Park Residences – a condominium under development in Hulhumale’ – has been rejected by the High Court.

The items, presumed to have been brought from the money acquired through the fraudulent sales, were seized by the police at the request of Prosecutor General’s Office on November 14^th.

The items valued at MVR 7 million were seized alongside his penthouse apartment valued at almost MVR 8 million under a court order issued by Hulhumale’ Court. Manday appealed the order to the High Court.

However, High Court has rejected the appeal, citing Manday’s failure to establish a legal reason behind why the court order should be appealed.

Items discovered by the police during their raid of the penthouse apartment include 200 unopened perfume bottles, luxury bags, and jewelry.

“Bags worth around MVR 90,000. Handbags worth between MVR 40,000-MVR 50,000. Different types of jewelry worth USD 10,000-USD 25,000. The total value of these goods amount to MVR 7 million,” he said.

The fraudulent sale of the apartments from K-Park Residences was submitted for police investigation by both Hanbo – the project’s developer - and Urbanco.

Manday, the former minority shareholder at Hanbo, was arrested by the police, but was later granted conditional release by the court.

Prosecutor General Hussain Shameem, in a press conference last Thursday, the case that Manday, along with other suspects in the case, are accused of doctoring documents by forging the signature of Hanbo’s majority shareholders, and opening an account in the company’s name with the Bank of Maldives (BML) in order to commit acts of fraud and scam.

Shameem said that PGO expects to file charges against Manday, and a second unnamed suspect in the case, this week.

He said that Manday would be separately charged for each act of fraud, and the charges against him are expected to exceed 200.

He added that the authorities are running multiple parallel investigations in the case, and the number of charges is therefore expected to increase.

Hanbo, which launched the K-Park project in 2016, was co-owned by Jin Shihu, a Chinese national, and Manday. Shihu owned 95 percent of the shares while Manday owned the remaining five percent.

Manday previously denied the allegations against him and has expressed his intention to cooperate with the authorities in the investigation underway.