On the morning of Aug. 17, 2014, an officer in the special operations section of the Maldives police force heard the beep of an incoming message from his cell phone.
It was from Ahmed Adeeb, who at the time was the country’s tourism minister.
“You guys need to focus on this auditor general,” he wrote in his message, referring to Ibrahim Niyaz, who had been investigating corruption in the country’s tourism marketing authority, the Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Corporation (MMPRC).