A district court in Port Louis has struck out the provisional money-laundering charge against Sattar Hajee Abdoula, the former Air Mauritius administrator and Grant Thornton executive linked to a 3.6 million rupee advisory-services payment. The ruling removes the conditions attached to the charge, but the wider Financial Crimes Commission investigation remains open.
The case centres on a payment made by Air Mauritius to Grant Thornton Advisory Services Ltd in March 2020, before Abdoula took up his role at the airline. The court found that investigators had not established a sufficient reasonable suspicion at this stage and that the money was paid into the company’s account, not Abdoula’s personal account. It also found no concrete evidence that he personally bypassed Air Mauritius procedures.
The decision is a legal setback for the anti-corruption probe, but it is not an acquittal or a declaration of innocence. Further steps in the investigation have not been made clear in the accessible reporting.