High Court upholds order seizing Manday’s assets

High Court, on Thursday, upheld the order by Hulhumale’ Court which seized MVR 7 million worth of items owned by Hassan Mamdhooh (Manday) 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.

High Court, on Thursday, said Money Laundering Act empowers authorities to seize assets with reasonable cause in such cases.

The appellate court, underscoring that Manday could have requested the lower court to review their order, said such a request had not been filed by Manday.

Therewith, the court, by the unanimous consensus of all three judges who heard the appeal, said Hulhumale’ Court’s order cannot be overturned at the moment.

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

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 was arrested by the police, but was later granted conditional release by the court.

Manday has been pressed with over 100 charges: 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.

According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Manday, and co-defendant Jaishan Saaeed, 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 has accused Manday of forging the signature of the company’s managing director to open an MVR and dollar account with BML through which he had misappropriated funds from customers despite the company already having opened its banking account with State Bank of India.

They have further accused Manday of withdrawing the money deposited to the accounts by customers.

Manday has denied the allegations against him and has expressed his intention to cooperate with the authorities concerning the ongoing case.