Auditor General Hussain Niyazy has told a parliament committee that documents relating to the bidding and tendering process for the Blues Housing Project were not available due to a problem with the Police Cooperative Society (Polco) server.
Niyazy was responding to a question raised by Hanimaadhoo MP Abdul Ghafoor Moosa in the Public Accounts Committee to clarify whether the management of Polco was unaware that the project was awarded in favour of the contractor.
He said the scope of the audit included clarifying the bidding process but related documents were not available from Polco.
"...The project started in 2013. Then when we met with the management of Polco, they said that they do not have many of the documents because of a problem with the server," Niyazy said.
The auditors checked the gazette when Polco failed to provide the documents. Niyazy said the project was not announced in the gazette and that the audit office only received contracts during the audit process.
Although some documents were not available, the police provided related letters after the audit ended. Niyazy said investigating agencies must look into this matter.
In the audit report of Polco's flats, auditors flagged suspicious transactions and noted that the representative of Noomadi company and the managing director of Island Expert Mr. X benefited unduly from the project.
The audit report did not name Mr. X, but the information in the report indicates that the person is Anon Songpanya.
The audit also found that the Polco flats were built at a cost of more than MVR 1 billion, which benefited the contractors by exceeding the market prices.
Contractors also owe huge amounts of money to Polco, but the report shows that Polco has not worked to recover the money.
