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The Criminal Court has sentenced former Maldivian Bank of Ceylon Deputy Country Manager Hassan Waheed to prison and fined him MVR 162,000 after convicting him of forging documents to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from a customer's account.
News Desk
Bank of Ceylon building in Male' - Photo: PSM File
MALE : The Criminal Court has sentenced the former Maldivian Deputy Country Manager and Compliance Officer of Bank of Ceylon’s Male branch, Hassan Waheed, to prison following his conviction on forgery and unauthorized property control charges.
Judge Ali Nadeem delivered the verdicts, concluding trial proceedings stemming from fraudulent transactions initiated in 2019.
The court sentenced Waheed to two years, nine months, and 11 days in prison along with an MVR 144,000 fine for unlawfully exercising control over another person’s property. He received an additional sentence of six months and 18 days in prison with an MVR 18,000 fine for knowingly forging a document.
Court rulings detailed that on June 9, 2019, Waheed forged a transfer request under a female customer’s name without her knowledge to siphon $150,000 from her account. The forged document was processed through a bank staff member to transfer the funds into an account belonging to Abdulla Nafeeq Pasha, before being routed within five minutes to Senior International Private Limited to settle external invoices. An audit revealed a similar $110,000 unauthorized transfer executed through the same channel in July 2018.
Forensic analysis of Waheed’s computer CPU recovered temporary Word files of the fraudulent transfer request, while CCTV footage matched the exact time he printed and retrieved the document. Forensic document examiners confirmed that signatures were forged using a simulated method, and papers used to practice the customer’s signature were recovered from Waheed’s cabin.
