Identity theft and pizza parties: PNC's fraudulent path to largest party

“She cannot sign or even hold a pen on her right hand,” Majeed wrote on X after posting the fraudulent form on January 28.

Her story was among a steady stream shared on social media in recent weeks. Scores of people found themselves registered as members of the People’s National Congress without their knowledge or consent, including an opposition lawmaker and the spouses and children of politicians. Complaints started piling up after the PNC launched a recruitment drive in August with the goal of reaching 100,000 members.

The witnesses on his mother-in-law’s forged application were political appointees, Majeed, a senior engineer at Trans-Maldivian Airways, told the Maldives Independent. 

“When I called the second witness, Fathmath Rafa, Buchage, Gaaf Dhaal Faresmaathoda, at first she said, ‘I don’t even know PNC. I’m Rishma.’ But I told her, ‘it says Rafa on Viber.’ As soon as I said that, she hung up and blocked me,” he recounted. 

Majeed’s suspicions of systemic fraud echoed outrage over leaked photos of home ministry officials cropping facial images and filling out stacks of PNC membership forms. The photos showed Homeland Security Minister Ali Ihusan and other political appointees, including Deputy Minister Ahmed Aaly and State Minister Abdul Majeed (no relation to engineer Majeed), the pair in charge of the Department of National Registration, which functions under the home ministry. 

The photos that emerged on January 15 had been taken inside a DNR meeting room.

Civil society decried the apparent violation of privacy. The main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party seized on the scandal to call for Ihusan’s resignation, seeking a police probe into alleged identity theft with illegally accessed records. 

The PNC was accused of inflating its membership to draw a larger amount as state funding, which is doled out based on the number of members. Fraudulent registration has been a perennial concern since the financial incentive to boost membership came with the 2013 political party law. 

The government denied any breach or misuse of personal information from the DNR database. 

After inviting the press to the DNR office on January 21, State Minister Majeed suggested that the modest scale of the alleged fraud was evidence of innocence, offering the infamous “If I did it” defence. 

“If there was any truth or reality to the allegations made against us, why would we submit 1,700 forms? We can take that to a much larger figure than that,” he told journalists, referring to forms contributed to the PNC membership drive by a home ministry team of 56 political appointees.

“I only went there to eat pizza,” was Deputy Minister Aaly’s explanation for his photos. The meeting room had been made available upon request from the minister’s bureau, Aaly said. But he could not remember whom. He denied signing any forms as a witness and claimed his signature on forms shared on social media were forgeries.

Unconvinced by the “pizza party” excuse, reporters pressed the officials on their admission of using government premises for a political party activity. Lacking any answers, Majeed and Aaly quietly fled the scene. 

The most audacious case of the forged membership applications involved MDP MP Hussain Ziyad, known as ‘Fittey,’ who found his party registration switched to the PNC in early January. Speaking to the Maldives Independent, Fittey described how the fraudulent forms indicated compromised access to DNR data.

“For example, my photo on my ID card from 10 years ago was used on my fraudulent form under my name. I directly examined forms from about 130 people from the island [of Vaikaradhoo] and from people that I know. Almost all the forms had photos from expired ID cards. So the source is clear,” the MP for Vaikaradhoo explained, noting the Election Commission’s rules that prohibit the use of photos from a current ID card.

Fittey’s conclusion was reinforced by an unlikely source. 

Before the DNR scandal broke, dissent was brewing inside the PNC. In an explosive message to a PNC WhatsApp group on January 13, MP Asma Rasheed revealed that forms were being created inside a PNC office by changing the colour of a person’s clothes on expired national identity cards photos.

“I know who did it. What’s sad is that this was done within PNC. This isn’t how you increase membership. This is shameful. I’m very ashamed as well,” the PNC MP for Central Maafannu wrote.

The PNC conceded the submission of invalid membership forms but denied any wrongdoing, promising an internal inquiry.

Not all cases involved expired photos. Anwar Ali - a deputy director at the finance ministry and former member of the constitutional assembly who retired from politics two decades ago - found an unknown person’s photo on the forged submission under his name.  

A complaint has been filed with the EC, Anwar told the Maldives Independent.

The MDP said it had received 3,000 complaints from party members transferred to the PNC. Smaller parties were not spared either. The Democrats lost about 500 members. 

“A submission to an official state institution with a person’s forged signature is a criminal offence recognised by the penal code,” Democrats Secretary-General Ali Razzan told the Maldives Independent, referring to a class of forgery that carries a prison sentence of up to two years or a fine of MVR 100,000 (US$ 6,485).

“If the Elections Commission had tried to verify the authenticity of the forms, people couldn’t have been signed up to PNC in their hundreds and thousands with definitely fraudulent forms. Certainly when you consider funding from the state based on the number of members, Elections should be aware and look into this,” he added. 

Mohamed Maleeh Jamal from the People’s National Front, a new party formed by former president Abdulla Yameen, concurred that it was “very clearly visible fraud." 

“The person joining the party must be present when witnesses sign [the membership form]. There’s a person to approve each form. The entire case will be unraveled when they are questioned,” he said. Maleeh’s wife and Yameen’s daughter-in-law were among PNF members who unwittingly found themselves in the PNC. According to figures published by the EC on January 10, the PNF’s membership has gone down by 238 members from 3,060 at registration.

When the EC came under fire over the membership fraud, the five-member electoral commission blamed their lack of a photo database or the resources for fingerprint verification. 

“Elections only checks to see whether or not the photo matches with the ID card,” MDP MP Fittey told the Maldives Independent, citing their response to concerns raised by the main opposition party.

After years of inaction despite recurring reports, the present scandal prompted reforms. On January 31, the commission suspended accepting forms in bulk from political parties. With effect on February 15, membership forms must be submitted through the eFaas digital national identity card, the EC announced this week. Applications must be submitted online through a person’s verified account.

But the proposed remedy came after the EC published an updated registry on January 23 with the PNC as the largest party with 68,000 members - a staggering rise from 28,000 members in December 2023. Down from 50,000 to 43,700 members, the MDP slipped from the top spot. 

The political parties law mandates the distribution of 0.1 to 0.2 percent of projected state revenue among parties. Despite a 3,000-member threshold for registration, only parties with more than 10,000 members are eligible for monetary support.

In mid-January, the MDP petitioned Prosecutor General Abbas Shareef to order the police to investigate suspected home ministry officials. “When the investigative agency completes the investigation of this case and submits it to this office, we will take the necessary legal action,” the chief prosecutor assured in his reply. 

Majeed, the engineer whose mother-in-law was among the victims of the membership fraud, opted against a formal complaint. He feared her old age pension could be discontinued. 

“I don’t believe that we will face anything but difficulty from complaining individually like this,” he said. “We won’t get justice, they might even cut the allowance.”