Abdullah Yameen
– Photo: Social Media
A Maldivian court on Sunday sentenced former President Abdulla Yameen to 11 years in prison. Yameen has been found guilty of corruption and money laundering. The court found Yameen guilty of the charges and fined him five million dollars.
The court found Yameen guilty of accepting a bribe in exchange for the lease of an island owned by the government. Yameen was the President of Maldives from 2013 to 2018. He lost the election in 2018. However, Yameen was declared the presidential candidate for the Progressive Party of Maldives for the elections to be held in 2023.
He was sentenced in 2019 to five years in prison in an earlier corruption case and fined $5 million in 2019 for embezzling $1 million in state funds, which prosecutors said came from leasing resort development rights. was achieved through Following his conviction, Yameen was transferred to house arrest in 2020 and was freed months later.
However, two years later the Supreme Court overturned the verdict, saying there were inconsistencies in the evidence and it did not conclusively prove that Yameen had laundered $1 million in government funds for personal gain.