In closed-door meeting, ACC asks for more funds to supplement MVR 50mn budget

 During a closed-door meeting on Wednesday with the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) asked for additional funds to create a new department to investigate serious frauds.

Top ACC officials had met with the Public Accounts Committee for a meeting on Wednesday morning. The meeting was called at the request of the ACC, and the agenda was “discussions regarding challenges in completing the commission’s investigations.”

However, the committee decided to hold the meeting behind closed doors, with no explanation given as to the reason for the decision.

 But a member of the Public Accounts Committee, who spoke to Sun on condition of anonymity, said on Thursday that the ACC asked for funding to create a new serious fraud investigation department.

The request for additional funding comes as the ACC faces criticism, including from the Parliament itself, over delays in the commission’s corruption investigations and slow rate of recovery of stolen state funds.

The ACC receives a significant annual budget from the state to investigate corruption cases. The commission received a budget of MVR 50 million in 2023, a budget of MVR 47 million for 2024, and MVR 50 million for this year. 

However, the commission has been accused of failure to produce results to justify the high spending, including during Wednesday’s committee meeting itself.

The exact figure the ACC is seeking is unclear.

According to its 2024 annual report, the commission decided to recover MVR 74 million lost in 15 different corruption cases, but managed to recover only MVR 234,531 lost in five different cases.