High Court to hear appeal over seizure of Manday’s assets

The High Court’s Council of Judges has overturned the decision by the court’s registrar to reject an appeal filed by Hassan Mamdhooh (Manday) to recover the luxury items worth MVR  7 million seized from his penthouse apartment in the investigation into the fraud in the sale of apartments from K-Park Residences – a condo under development by Hanbo in Hulhumale’.

During the investigation into the case, the police raided a MVR 7.8 million penthouse apartment owned by Manday on November 19, inside which they found luxury items worth MVR 7 million, including 200 unopened perfume bottles, designer bags, and jewelry.

The apartment, along with the items found inside, have been seized for a one-year-period.

Manday had appealed the seizure of his assets with the High Court, but his petition was rejected by the court’s registrar.

He appealed the rejection with the court’s Council of Judges, which overturned the decision on Thursday.

The appeal was heard by a council of three judges. Judge Hassan Shafeeu had supported the registrar’s decision, while the other two – Judge Mohamed Saleem and Judge Mohamed Shaneez Abdulla found in favor of overturning the decision.

The council therefore decided to accept Manday’s petition.

Manday, together with his co-defendant Jaishan Saeed, have been pressed with 201 charges.

Manday was charged with three counts of knowingly providing a counterfeit document to a person with the intention of defrauding them, 50 counts of misappropriation, 50 counts of fraud, and one count of money laundering.

Meanwhile, Jaishan was charged with three counts of knowingly providing a counterfeit document to a person with the intention of defrauding them, 20 counts of misappropriation, 27 counts of accessory to misappropriation, 47 counts of farud, and one count of abetting money laundering.

According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, the suspects doctored documents by forging the signature of Hanbo’s majority shareholder – Jin Shihu, which they used to open an account in the company’s name with the Bank of Maldives.

They then repeatedly sold 23 apartments to over 50 people.

Authorities found a single apartment was sold to as many as six people.

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.