MMA Governor Ahmed Munawar said the government will submit amendments requiring businesses earning foreign currency to convert 40 per cent of monthly revenue through Maldivian banks. The current requirement is 20 per cent. Speaking at a President's Office press conference, he said the only lasting way to solve importers' difficulty in obtaining dollars is for those earning them to convert consistently through local banks.
Seven money changers sold US$76 million on the black market over the past nine months, Homeland Security Minister Ali Ihusan revealed at the press briefing. Investigations found major resorts among those supplying dollars to black market exchangers, including one resort chain that sold US$4 million on the black market in nine months, he said, warning that unlicensed exchange is a criminal offence and that profiting from such transactions constitutes money laundering.
Ihusan announced that enforcement of foreign currency laws has now begun with fines of MVR5,000 (US$324) to MVR1 million per transaction, and alleged that political actors have been coordinating black market rates with exchangers calling each other each morning to set the day's rate.
MATI said its executive board was summoned to the President's Office on Sunday and told that law enforcement investigations had found some resort operators fuelling the parallel currency market through illegal transactions and inflating the rate. It said it has no knowledge of any such activity and has consistently urged members to comply with the law. An allegation under investigation against some operators should not justify a measure applied to a whole industry, it said, nor is it accurate to attribute pressure on the parallel market to resorts alone. MATI said MMA proposed a uniform 20 per cent requirement at a meeting earlier this month, that its position has been that any requirement should not exceed 10 per cent, and that doubling the proposal to 40 per cent within weeks is not viable given resorts' existing dollar outgoings on fuel, salaries, supplies, taxes, land rent and foreign currency loans. It said long-pending exemption requests from resorts unable to meet the current requirement remain unresolved. MATI represents 146 of the country's resorts among 200 members.
Thirty-one students from Addu Feydhoo School fell ill with suspected food poisoning during a cadet camp, presenting with vomiting, diarrhoea and stomach pain, with seven treated at Addu Equatorial Hospital and 12 each at Feydhoo and Maradhoo health centres. Hospital officials said most were under observation rather than admitted and none were in serious condition, with the cause of the poisoning not yet determined.
Four expatriates were injured, two seriously, when a gas cylinder exploded and started a fire in a ground-floor kitchen at Dhoogas-4 in Malé. Police were alerted at 5.27am and MNDF firefighters put out the fire by 6.02am. Two Bangladeshi and two Indian nationals were being treated at IGMH. According to media reports, the fire was in a five-room dwelling housing 15 people; a wall fell onto the building's water meter, bursting pipes and flooding the building.
A Civil Court case against former vice president Ahmed Adeeb was closed after he paid the remaining MVR1 million (US$64,852) of an MVR2 million fine. It had been imposed by the Criminal Court in 2020 as part of his guilty plea on seven counts related to the MMPRC embezzlement. He previously paid MVR100,000 in September 2025 and the remaining MVR900,000 on 13 August. Adeeb had been sentenced to 20 years but was freed after then-President Solih commuted the sentence in his final days in office.
FAM former president Bassam Adeel Jaleel, sentenced to 32 years for embezzling association funds including misappropriating FIFA relief money, has been transferred to house arrest on medical grounds following a medical board recommendation, according to Corrections. It is the second time Bassam has been moved to house arrest, a similar transfer in March was reversed the following day after public criticism.
Asif Haneef, who represented the social security ministry on the Pension Board, was removed from his position last Thursday while he was in Malaysia for a course, without any stated reason.
Ibrahim Shiuree resigned as managing director of Visit Maldives Corporation for undisclosed reasons.
MPL and Uligamu Council signed a land agreement for a yacht marina in the northernmost atoll, more than a year after the two sides first signed on the project in August 2024. The MPL chief executive said work will begin this month on a marina for about 18 yachts, which he called small-scale and expects to expand. MPL will pay rent from three years after the marina begins operating. Between 100 and 150 yachts anchor at Uligamu each year and there has been concern that they are not adequately served.
The Civil Service Commission changed the rules on salary increments so that staff who take maternity or long medical leave are not denied progression. Under the pay framework, an increment required 85 marks in performance appraisals in two consecutive years, and appraisals did not count where an employee worked fewer than 90 days in a year. The years may now be non-consecutive, so someone who took six months' maternity leave in 2025 can qualify on their 2024 and 2026 appraisals. Where a person changes workplace during the year, service at both is now combined. A petition raised in March by Mariyam Shifana Hussain over the rules gathered more than 1,300 signatures.
