The Maldives is to ask Beijing to reduce the debt it accrued during a recent Chinese investment boom, according to its new finance minister who claims large-scale graft inflated the value of contracts under the previous government.
“This was wilful corruption,” Ibrahim Ameer told the Financial Times. “[The former government] knew what they were doing, getting kickbacks from contractors . . . That’s why the contract prices were too high.”
Mr Ameer is part of a new administration that took charge in November after the electoral defeat of former president Abdulla Yameen, who had overseen a huge surge in Chinese-funded projects. Beijing had promoted the investments in the Maldives as a success story in its Belt and Road Initiative, a large-scale programme to fund and develop infrastructure across Asia and beyond.