Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) MP Mohamed Musthafa has sent a letter to the Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) threatening legal action if it does will not pay US$500,000 that the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) owed Musthafa’s Seafood Company.
Mustafa said the money was to be paid according to a ruling issued by the London Commercial Court in 1991.
‘’This money was the money we paid to Generalmeat Limited in Manchester to import flour, sugar and tin during the days we imported items from Generalmeat Limited,’’ Musthafa said in the letter. ‘’We waited for the goods for months. They said they had loaded 74 containers in the name of our company and later when we checked to Hanjin Shipping Line and Bangladesh Shipping Corporation we found out that Generalmeat had not loaded any containers in the name of our company.’’
Musthafa said when he realized that Generalmeat Limited had deceived his company, the company then appointed Birkett Westhorp and Loan law firm and filed a suit in the London Commercial Court.
‘’The London Commercial Court issued a court order to freeze all the accounts of Generalmeat Limited, but BCCI pretended that they did not receive the court warrant and transferred Generalmeat’s money in BCCI to shareholders’ wives accounts in Scotland,’’ he alleged in the letter.
‘’The London Commercial Court then ruled that BCCI and Generalmeat have deceived Seafood and ordered they pay Seafood US$500,000 in 14 days, and that the money should be paid to Seafood in the duration by withdrawing money from any account of BCCI anywhere in the world.’’
Musthafa said his Seafood Company then filed the case in the Singapore High Court citing Commonwealth Law Enforcement Declaration, and requested the court seize a BCCI boat loaded with flour at Singapore port.
‘’The Singapore High Court then detained the boat, but while this case was going on in the court, nine other international companies that BCCI had deceived came to know about this case and entered into it,’’ Musthafa said. ‘’But then we realized that it would take years to reach to a conclusion while the flour would expire in three months, so we got out of the suit.’’
Since the ruling came originally from London’s Commercial Court and the Maldives is a member state of the Commonwealth, the Maldives must implement the verdict, claimed Musthafa.
‘’BCCI is dead now and MMA is the live branch of BCCI in the Maldives,” he said. “The debt of a dead person has to be paid by a living legal parent. If the MMA does not pay us within seven days we will sue the MMA in court and when we sue, we will ask the court to take the amount of money for the loss we have had for the past 20 years as a cause of not having this money.’’
Speaking to Minivan News today, Musthafa said that if the MMA did not respond to the letter by the end of this week, he will have no other choice but to file the case in the court.
‘’It was a ruling that all the countries followed and implemented, so the MMA should implement the verdict too,’’ he said.
Governor of the MMA Fazeel Najeeb was not responding at time of press.
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‘’BCCI is dead now and MMA is the live branch of BCCI in the Maldives,” he said. Ha ha. Anni certainly has as lovely men in his parliamentary group. Reeko, Seafood man etc
Oh god! This is news?
It is a sad sad day when charlatans, frauds, thieves, idiots and criminals of all stripes run around parading their ties and off-the-rack shirts for all of us to wretch at.
An end must be brought to this tomfoolery. There were undeserving people in Qayyooms government but not prize idiots like these.
I guess I should be fair, Qayyooms government was smaller and so was the Parliament then, so the occurrence rate of idiots would be less.
I honestly wonder where this fellow gets the feeing that he'll win the lawsuit...
This is a ludicrous feat of desperation; a futile attempt at avoiding a penalty which he may well have to face if the honorable member of parliament is insolvent in his financial obligation to the state by the end of the year. This is honestly a mindless thing to do... I can imagine just how easily the whole situation can warrant a toll on the poor guy...
Firstly, what he is asking for is compensation for losses made on a bad deal with a currently liquidated company FROM what used to serve as an auxiliary branch for the now DEFUNCT corporation. The key word here is "liquidated"; if anything had to be settled between Seafood and BCCI, it would have happened during the forced closure of the corporation. Now that the corporation is defunct and therefore does not legally exist, Mr. MP has no legal right to ask for that money.
Secondly, Mr. MP has confounded liability with jurisdiction. MMA used to house an auxiliary unit/branch for BCCI while BCCI operated on Maldivian soil. This was strictly a matter of jurisdiction. Heck no foreign corporation operating in the political boundaries of our Nation is autonomous.
Mr.MP also appears to have misinterpreted the terms of the ruling by the London Commercial Court in the case of Mr. MP's stolen money. In the words of Mr. MP "The London Commercial Court then ruled that BCCI and Generalmeat have deceived Seafood and ordered they pay Seafood US$500,000 in 14 days, and that the money should be paid to Seafood in the duration by withdrawing money from any account of BCCI anywhere in the world.’’ The fallacy in his argument that the MMA - mind you, this is the central bank of the republic of Maldives we are talking about - is liable for BCCI's crimes stems from the erroneous assumption that the Maldives Monetary Authority is an entity answerable to a parent corporation, BCCI, which it is not. Hence Mr.MP may have had the impression that the MMA would be able to cash out the amount owed by BCCI from the Nation's reserves since, by his interpretation, the NATION's HIGHEST AUTHORITY concerning matters of money is ANSWERABLE TO A FOREIGN CORPORATION. If only he knew how ridiculous that sounds!
Furthermore, procedures for the Central Bank to be prosecuted is solely reserved for the government and those corporations to which the Central Bank is a lender of last resort. The central bank is infallible to claims by private individuals who are inconvenienced by its conduct, because there is no way that any one individual can be inconvenienced any more than the rest of the country's population. The outcome of the affairs of the Central Bank is a mutual and passive issue for citizens... If the actions of the MMA leads to a BOP crisis, everybody shares the misery, or if the country happens to be in a credit crunch during the worst of a recession, EVERYBODY has to put up with a few more days of recession until the rescue comes along through fiscal injections.
The injustice done to Mr. MP is unfortunate. However, the window for redemption has long since passed. The MMA is not where to look for justice even though it is arguable that the injustice may have been carried out by fraudulent officials of the MMA (or an executive power) during which time the local BCCI branches were under it's jurisdiction. Even if this is proven to be the case, the MMA, as long as it does not serve the auxiliary function as local branch of BCCI (which it currently does not due to obvious reasons), any claims for a compensation on par with BCCI's original financial obligation to Seafood is irrelevant. Which basically means that the original lawsuit from 1991 cannot be resurrected from within the current context. Although if Mr. MP preferred to, or more importantly, we're capable of a settlement with those individuals from the MMA who masterminded the fraud, fueled by a strong case against those individuals, then it would be a completely different story. But honestly, his hopes of bulldozing an entire central bank over the actions of a few is pure fantasy.
OMG!
This bard is at it again!
Wonder what magic portion he's on!!!!
And Hon. MP; can you not add another three zeros to the sum?
Yes, please just give us half a million dollars 20 years after we received a ruling on this. Why didn't Mustafa go to court in 1992 in Maldives? I'm sure the statute of limitations must have run out on this by now. If we have a statute of limitations of course. I concur with Bokkura's rant. It is a rather beautifully satisfying rant at that.
@ Bokkuraa Greenspan Very well said indeed. But Im wondering why on earth you wasted so much of time an energy on this idiot? A kilaafani would easily beat Seafood mustafa at understanding what you've said.
@ razzaq romeo
I may have said a few more words than intended.
But If I know anything about how our courts work, it is that a lot more might have to be said which shouldn't necessarily be said.
Scary. Mustapha has a good chance of winning in our court system.