KATHMANDU, MAY 9
Employees Provident Fund (EPF) has announced the auction of CTC Mall located at Sundhara, which is owned by Chairperson of Civil Group Ichchha Raj Tamang after he defaulted on his loan payment.
Issuing a public notice to-day, the EPF has called for sealed bids within 35 days for auction sale of 132 shops spanned over 82,000 square feet area of the mall.
According to Manager of EPF Dilip Raj Paudel, the fund was compelled to go ahead with the auction process of the mall as Tamang failed to repay the loan within given deadline of 35 days.
The EPF had issued a 35-day notice on November 22 of last year warning that the CTC Mall would be put up for auction if Tamang defaulted on his loan payment.
Paudel informed that Tamang had taken a loan amounting to around Rs 650 million from EPF by pledging the mall as collateral.
"However, he has only repaid around Rs 250 million so far."
Along with Tamang, the mall is co-owned by Keshav Lal Shrestha and Prabin Mukhiya. Lal Kaji Gurung, Ram Krishna Poudel, Harihar Prasad Lamichhane, Pravin Prasad Pradhan and Suman Nandan Vaidya are among the personal guarantors.
According to today's notice, the auction process will be called off if Tamang clears the loan within the next 35 days.
Tamang, who is also a real estate mogul, has been remanded in police custody since September 7, 2021 on the charge of embezzling around Rs seven billion from a total of 1,502 depositors of Civil Savings and Credit Cooperatives.
It has been learnt that his cooperative was facing liquidity crunch after investing an eye-popping Rs 7.5 billion in his realty business out of Rs eight billion collected from depositors.
He was also a former member of Constitution Assembly from CPN-UML and former chairperson of Civil Bank.
A version of this article appears in the print on May 10, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
