MP Ahmed Mahloof, who was aligned with the ruling party until two years ago, has attested to having head from his peers in parliament that President Abdulla Yameen had spoken of a million-dollar deposit to his bank account.

The now non-partisan lawmaker said in an interview on Friday night that he has heard from a number of parliamentarians that President Yameen had spoken spoke about a sum of USD 5 million, and a one-million-dollar deposit specifically, in a press conference held around September of 2015.

Mahloof went on to say that just about fourty parliamentarians had been in attendance at the conference and can attest to the fact that President Yameen had in fact known about the million-dollar deposit that the Anti-Corruption Commission earlier this week confirmed.

After months of corruption allegations against the administration and statutory institutions operated by it, a frightful amount of it being exposed in Al Jazeera’s 2016 documentary, the Anti-Corruption Commission confirmed that a total of USD 1 million had been deposited to an account at the Maldives Islamic Bank, which belonged to President Yameen himself.

Mahloof further said that he had spoken about the massive reserves in President Yameen’s account then as well. MP Mahloof told RaajjeMV in 2016 that President Yameen’s account has sums of up to nine million that are wholly unaccounted for.

The President’s Office has denied the allegations and the faction of the ruling party loyal to President Yameen has said that the deposit is an attempt by the opposition to frame and ‘slander the administration’.

The Maldives Broadcast Commission has as such penalized private broadcaster Raajje Television (RaajjeTV) for reporting the Anti-Corruption Commission’s validation of the deposit. However, lending more strength to the report, former parliamentarian and the Maldivian Democratic Party’s ex-chairperson Ali Waheed said that he has evidence that can provide that the Maldives Islamic Bank’s management knew about the deposit.