KATHMANDU, MAY 7
The Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) has filed a corruption chargesheet at the Special Court in Kathmandu against 13 individuals, including a former finance minister, senior civil servants, and Chinese contractor officials, over alleged financial irregularities amounting to Rs 3.62 billion during the construction of Pokhara Regional International Airport.
According to the CIAA, investigations established that the accused colluded to grant double benefits to Chinese contractor China CAMC Engineering Co., Ltd by illegally waiving taxes, duties, and other charges that the company was contractually obligated to pay under Nepali law.
According to the chargesheet, the original commercial contract agreement between the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal and China CAMC had included taxes, duties, and other charges within the contract price, with those amounts to be paid by the contractor in accordance with prevailing Nepali law. However, a separate Implementation Agreement was subsequently executed that reversed this arrangement - exempting the contractor from those obligations.
China CAMC then received payment that included the tax component built into the contract price, while those same tax amounts were never deposited into the state treasury. This arrangement resulted in what the CIAA termed a "double benefit" to the contractor.
The 13 accused named in the chargesheet are:
Former Finance Minister Gyanendra Bahadur Karki; former Finance Ministry Secretary Shankar Prasad Adhikari; former Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Ministry Secretary Maheshwar Neupane; former Finance Ministry Joint Secretary Kewal Prasad Bhandari; former Culture Ministry Joint Secretaries Suresh Acharya and Dandhuraj Ghimire; and former CAAN Director General Sanjeev Gautam.
Likewise, the then Project Director of the National Pride Project under CAAN, Pradip Adhikari; former Culture Ministry Electronics Engineer Yogesh Aryal; former Finance Ministry Under-Secretary Yugraj Pande; and former Section Officer Urmila Bhandari have also been charged.
The contractor company, China CAMC Engineering Co., Ltd., along with its chairman Wang Bo and project manager Yang Zhigang, has also been made a defendant in the case.
The CIAA has demanded imprisonment and fines equivalent to the full misappropriated amount for the Nepali officials under Sections 3 and 17 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 2059, with additional punishment sought under Section 24 of the same act for the more senior accused. The Chinese company and its two executives are charged as abettors under Section 22 of the Act, with the CIAA seeking equivalent punishment to that of the principal offenders.
The case pertains to the construction of the Pokhara Regional International Airport, a national pride project developed with foreign loan assistance.