The Maldives Sports Awards 2022 were handed out at a gala event in Malé. Along with 15 Lifetime Achievement Awards and 16 Sports Icon Awards, 108 awards were presented in 18 different sports.
Invited guests included former Sri Lankan cricket captain Sanath Jayasuriya, former Brazilian footballer Roberto Carlos, former Dutch footballer Edgar Davids, former Spanish footballer Michel Salgado, table tennis legend Zoran Primorac, Indian Cricket star Suresh Raina, legendary Brazilian volleyball player Gilberto (Giba) Godoy, former Senegalese professional footballer Khalilou Fadiga, WPA World Nine-ball Champion Albin Ouschan, world record holder in competitive swimming Sarah Sjöström, current highest ranking wheelchair tennis player in Britain Lucy Shuker, Paralympic gold medalist and eighteen time Grand Slam doubles champion Gordon Reid, football referee Markus Merk, and sports journalist Fabrizio Romano.
New members were appointed to the Anti-Corruption Commission after parliament approved the president’s nominees, filling an oversight vacuum left by the resignation of all five members last year.
On the same day, the president dissolved an asset recovery commission formed to probe the theft of US$90 million during the previous administration, a corruption scandal of historic proportions. The reconstituted anti-graft watchdog will take over pending investigations.
The Malé City Council removed 130 pallets illegally kept on streets to block parking spots.
In a letter in response to a query from a lawmaker, Home Minister Sheikh Imran Abdulla denied Attorney General Ibrahim Riffath’s allegation that police officers deliberately exploit loopholes to free drug trafficking suspects on technicalities. No officer was under investigation over the release of a suspect. But the police professional standards command was looking into the case of an officer who failed to submit an inventory of items confiscated in a drug raid.
The home minister accused the criminal court of stalling drug cases and refusing to grant warrants to extract information from suspects’ mobile phones.
A 35-year-old man was arrested from Dhiyamigili for stabbing the island’s imam. The 55-year-old victim is undergoing treatment at the Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital. He was reportedly stable and recovering.
Security camera footage of the stabbing was widely circulated on social media.
President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih announced the government’s decision to revoke a two-year state of public health emergency and lift Covid-19 restrictions, including mask mandates and PCR tests for travel regardless of vaccination status.
The defence ministry strongly denied former president Abdulla Yameen’s claims that an agreement to develop a naval dockyard authorises Indian warships to enter Maldivian waters and allows Indian soldiers stationed here to carry weapons without permission. Any foreign vessel would require diplomatic clearance or authorisation to enter the country’s territorial waters, the defence ministry assured, adding that the Maldives military would retain “100 percent control and ownership” of the new dockyard. The ministry also dismissed allegations about armed Indian soldiers.
