The Civil Court has dismissed an enforcement case filed against SOF over the company's failure to make payments to the Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Corporation (MMPRC) in line with a previous judgment.
In the MMPRC corruption scandal, acquisition fees paid to the state for islands and lagoons leased through the MMPRC were embezzled and deposited to SOF's bank account.
The Civil Court ordered SOF to pay MVR 10,708,271 to the MMPRC on September 17, 2017. The company was ordered to pay monthly installments to the court over a six-month period.
But the Civil Court started looking into SOF's failure to make the payments in compliance with the judgment. At the time, the court initiated the case under a circular issued by the Supreme Court before the civil procedures law came into force.
In a judgment delivered last Wednesday, Civil Court Judge Hassan Fahmy Ibrahim said an enforcement order could only be made in the presence of the claimant as specified in the civil procedures law.
Despite accepting summons to attend Wednesday's hearing, the MMPRC was absent from the proceedings.
"With the measures requested by the claimant unknown, and as there is a possibility that the respondent could have been offered opportunities to make the payments after both sides talked outside of court, the court believes that processes for enforcement of the judgment could not go ahead without the say of the claimant," the judgment reads.
The bulk of the estimated MVR 3 billion stolen in the MMPRC corruption scandal was deposited to SOF's account. Despite the participation of the company's senior officials in carrying out the embezzlement scheme, none of them was charged.
A list of the company's board of directors was submitted to the Civil Court but they were out of the Maldives. None of them have returned since leaving the country on October 15, 2015, the Civil Court judgment noted.
