Asset Recovery Commission has revealed that the losses suffered by the State in the MMPRC corruption scandal amounts up to over MVR 3.4 billion.

During a press conference on Thursday, Asset Recovery Commission’s President Ahmed Assad said that the commission had been working to determine whether the islands and lagoons linked with the case were leased at their market value or not, and added that their investigation revealed that they were leased well below their market value. He added that the State should have earned at least MVR 3.4 billion if the islands in question had been leased at their proper market value.

“And looking at prices fixed for the islands, that is, without considering the lagoon area because we found it difficult to calculate the value of the lagoons as we don’t have a method to calculate the value of lagoons. But we do have a method to calculate the value of islands. From what we found based on this method, we aren’t talking about not being able to recover USD 77 million, but about not being able to recover USD 220 million or MVR 3.4 billion,” he said.

He stressed that if they included the value of said lagoons, expected losses will be well above MVR 4 billion. From the losses, so far only MVR 1.2 billion has been recovered which is about only a quarter of the actual losses.

He said the crime was committed due to the obvious failure of all state institutions, and there was not a single sector to which the embezzled funds had not been provided.

According to him, about 300 people are said to have benefitted from the scandal as well.