How Ras Malé was paid for, before Eagle Hills.

1Before Muizzu: a lagoon already promised to someone else

Fushidhiggaru lagoon, south of Malé, was a tourism site long before it was a housing site. Each government after 2011 had a different plan for it. None was built, and one of them left a bill.

Sources: Sun, Dec 2019; Minivan News archive, 2014; Maldives Independent, Jul 2014; Maldives Independent, 2016; Maldives Independent, Dec 2019; Adhadhu, 6 Nov 2023.

2The launch: land instead of money

President Muizzu inaugurated Ras Malé on 18 December 2023, about five weeks after taking office. He promised 1,153 hectares of new land in eight months, a zero-carbon “Maldives Eco City”, and later up to 65,000 homes. Two days later he said the project would be carried out without state expenditure.

The government had in fact proposed budget money: MVR 1.4 billion over three years, with MVR 400 million in 2024, MVR 600 million in 2025 and MVR 350 million in 2026. The Majlis, then with an MDP majority, passed the 2024 budget without the Ras Malé line. The government went ahead anyway.

HDC’s managing director, Ibrahim Fazul Rasheed, said the work had been awarded to three companies after their proposals were evaluated: Sri Lanka’s Capital Marine and Civil Construction (CMCC), Royal Boskalis of the Netherlands and China State Construction Engineering. Instead of cash, the contractors would get 70 hectares: 60 in the new lagoon land and 10 in Hulhumalé, on 50-year leases. The cost was to be recovered by selling plots. In practice, only CMCC is reported to have worked at Ras Malé under this model.

Within days, a case was filed with the ACC. It said the project had started outside the budget and without the public announcement normally required to choose contractors. The ACC confirmed it was investigating. No outcome has been published.

In March 2024 the Construction Minister, Dr Abdulla Muththalib, admitted the work began without a proper study of where to take sand from, and with a single dredger. He put the cost of reclaiming about 1,100 hectares at USD 500–700 million or more.

Sources: President’s Office, 18 Dec 2023; President’s Office, 20 Dec 2023; Atoll Times, Dec 2023; PSM, Dec 2023; Edition, Dec 2023; MV Republic, Mar 2024; Raajje, Jan 2025.

3CMCC out, USD 21 million in

In eight months CMCC reclaimed 29 hectares at Site J, about 2.5% of the target. The government cancelled the contract in May 2024 and withdrew the land award.

Then the money started. By September 2024 HDC had released MVR 77 million to finish Site J. In January 2025 it agreed to pay CMCC USD 21 million (MVR 323.8 million) over 12 months for the 29 hectares, dredging and shore protection included.

Government sources said this was payment for work done, not compensation. CMCC said a settlement agreement had been reached and denied it was going to arbitration. Adhadhu and Raajje reported that the company had prepared an arbitration claim and dropped it after the settlement. Either way, a contract sold to the public as cash-free ended with a cash payment from a state company.

The chain of unpaid work went further down. The state contractor MTCC reclaimed 10 hectares for CMCC and was not paid. In June 2025 the Civil Court ordered CMCC to pay MTCC USD 1.68 million. CMCC had argued it would pay once HDC paid it.

Sources: Adhadhu, 3 Sept 2024; Atoll Times, Jan 2025; Corporate Maldives, Jan 2025; Raajje, 26 Jan 2025; MMTV, 20 Jun 2025. Per-hectare figures are the monitor’s own arithmetic.

4HDC borrows; Indian and Chinese firms arrive

The second model dropped land-for-work and went to contractor payments funded by debt. A new environmental impact assessment in 2024 said the project would now be financed through a loan taken by HDC. Neither HDC nor the government disclosed the lender, the amount, the interest rate or what secures it. Adhadhu, working from the minister’s cost estimate, put it at USD 500 million or more.

The sites were split up:

• Mohan Mutha Exports (India): Sites D, F, G and L, about 378 hectares. D alone is 264 hectares, the largest site. Contract value not published.
• China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC): Sites A, B, H, I and K, about 352 hectares, under a USD 265.5 million contract over 18 months. Adhadhu noted no known reclamation record in the Maldives.
• China Harbour Engineering (CHEC): Sites C and E, due by 17 May 2026. Contract value not published.

The 2025 budget then carried MVR 600 million for the project, despite the original no-budget pledge. Progress picked up at Mohan Mutha’s sites: 101 hectares in total by 13 April 2025, against a target now cut from 1,153 to 1,009 hectares.

The CRCC advance. In August 2026 a report by the whistleblower account Hassan Kurusee, covered by Adhadhu and the Maldives Independent, set out what happened with CRCC. HDC paid it a USD 13.2 million advance before any reclamation began. CRCC later billed USD 9.4 million for work it said it had done. An independent evaluation HDC commissioned from Epoch Associates found about 3% of the project complete and no contract item finished. It could not verify a USD 2.6 million coral-relocation claim, and valued the usable part of a temporary jetty at under USD 1 million. HDC’s board accepted CRCC’s figure anyway. Site A, one of CRCC’s sites, was later reclaimed by MACL.

Sources: Adhadhu, 3 Sept 2024; MV Republic, Dec 2024; PSM, Mar 2025; Sun, Apr 2025; MMTV, Apr 2025; Maldives Independent, 9 Aug 2026.

5The 2025 cash crunch

By mid-2025 the country was short of dollars and the contractors needed them. Foreign reserves had been propped up by a USD 400 million currency swap from India in October 2024.

The USD 600 million plan. On 7 July 2025 the MDP’s former finance minister Ibrahim Ameer said the President had told the finance minister to release money from official reserves for Ras Malé advance payments. He said the government planned to borrow USD 600 million through state companies: USD 200 million through MACL, USD 100 million through the State Trading Organisation (STO), and USD 300 million through what he called “the Ras Malé company”. He questioned whether such sums could be raised, and called for the central bank governor to resign if he could not act independently. The monitor has not found the instruction itself published, or a government confirmation or denial.

Non-payment. In August 2025 Raajje reported that Mohan Mutha’s hopper dredger had left the Maldives after about a month idle over unpaid bills, halting work. HDC put progress at 10.8%.

Money printing claim. In October 2025 Raajje reported, citing one anonymous source, that the central bank would print over MVR 2 billion, route it through the pension fund into Treasury bills, and so fund Ras Malé. No institution confirmed this. It is recorded here as an unconfirmed claim.

By December 2025, 22 months after the launch, about 16% was reclaimed. Former President Yameen called the project the government’s largest corruption scheme. In August 2026 Ameer said the government had spent USD 285 million on Ras Malé and drones combined; he gave no breakdown.

Sources: Raajje, 7 Jul 2025; Maldives Independent, Jul 2025; Raajje, 7 Aug 2025; Raajje, 17 Oct 2025; Raajje, 8 Dec 2025; Maldives Independent, Aug 2026; The Standard, Jun 2025.

6The airport company takes over

The third model moved the work, and the debt, to Maldives Airports Company Limited (MACL). It earns dollars from the airport, which helps explain the choice. Two new subsidiaries were created within three weeks:

• Marine and Integrated Infrastructure Development (MIID), set up on 18 September 2025. It took over CMCC’s other reclamation contracts, not Ras Malé. See the box below.
• Peninsula Infrastructure, registered on 6 October 2025, wholly owned by MACL, with MACL’s managing director Ibrahim Shareef Mohamed as its managing director. It was set up for lagoon reclamation and construction. Sources told Sun it would get Ras Malé and that MACL was discussing USD 70 million in capital for it. A later audit report says it was awarded Ras Malé in 2025.

On 15 October 2025 the President said MACL would bring three dredgers, one of them a 40,000-tonne vessel for Ras Malé. On 15 November he pledged to finish within five months and hand out 15,000 plots.

On 1 December 2025 MACL started on Site A with Jan De Nul’s Cristóbal Colón, one of the two largest dredgers in the world, with a 46,000 cubic metre hopper. Site A went from nothing to 116 of 137.5 hectares by February 2026. By the end of March the President said nearly 500 hectares had been reclaimed. On 29 June he put progress at about 60%, admitted the deadline had been missed, blamed fuel costs from the war in the Middle East, and said it would finish within 2026. Reporting by then described the whole reclamation as contracted to MACL.

What the audits show. Peninsula Infrastructure’s 2025 accounts, signed by the Auditor General on 2 November 2026, show MVR 1.05 billion spent on projects by the end of 2025, booked against what it owes MACL. The report does not say how much of that was Ras Malé. It had no revenue and survives on a written promise of support from MACL. MACL’s group debt reached MVR 16.64 billion at the end of 2025, up MVR 3.2 billion in a year. That year MACL raised working-capital loans by mortgaging Velana airport’s land and runway lease rights, took MVR 1.26 billion in new loans, and borrowed USD 15 million against government securities it held. The Jan De Nul charter terms are not public.

Sources: Atoll Times, Oct 2025; Sun, Oct 2025; Edition, 15 Oct 2025; MV+, 24 Dec 2025; MMTV, 12 Feb 2026; Dredging Today, Mar 2026; Dredging Today, 29 Jun 2026; Raajje, 7 Nov 2026; Adhadhu, 7 Nov 2026.

7Who paid: the money table

Ras Malé only, from documented or reported figures. “Not public” is itself a finding. MVR converted at the official MVR 15.42 to the dollar where needed.

8What falls on the taxpayer

“No state expenditure” held only if “the state” meant the annual budget and nothing else. The cost reached the public in five other ways:

• Through the budget. Money was proposed for every year from 2024 to 2026, and the 2025 line was approved. The arbitration award is also paid from the budget.
• Through state companies. HDC and MACL are wholly state-owned. Their loans are public debt in all but name: if they cannot pay, the state stands behind them, and every rufiyaa of their debt is money not returned as dividends.
• Through airport assets. MACL secured loans on Velana airport’s land and runway lease rights in the year it took over reclamation.
• Through dollars. Dredging contractors are paid in dollars when the country is short of them. The use of reserves for advances is alleged, not confirmed.
• Through land. Public land was first offered as payment, and the new MACL subsidiaries are to be paid in land for other sites. The size and location of that land are not in the audits.

The government’s case is that new land is a lasting public asset, that it eases the housing crisis around Malé, and that work only moved once the state took direct control through MACL. Progress since December 2025 supports that last point. It does not answer what the land has cost, or who will repay the debt raised to make it.

9Promises and deadlines

10What we could not confirm

Several claims circulate in summaries of this project. The monitor checked them and could not find a primary or reported source. They are left out of the account above until one appears.

• Greater Malé Financial District Ltd as the USD 300m borrower. The company exists, set up by presidential decree on 1 June 2025 with MVR 1 billion authorised capital and a financial-hub mandate. No source found links it to Ras Malé loans. The opposition named “the Ras Malé company”.
• A Free Zone company as the payment channel, and a President’s Office letter of about 1 July 2025 naming a signatory. Not found in published reporting.
• Use of the India currency swap specifically for Ras Malé. Not found.
• Loss figures in the charges against Abdulla Jihad. The charges are confirmed; the amounts are not.
• MVR 2 billion printed for Ras Malé. One anonymous source; not confirmed.
• A single joint HDC–STO–MACL company. None found. The new companies are MACL subsidiaries.

Sources: President’s Office, 1 Jun 2025; Adhadhu, Nov 2023. Requests sent will be logged on the documents page.