CIAA conspicuously silent about starting any formal legal proceedings against former PM
KATHMANDU, JUNE 24
In a major development in the high-profile passport printing scam, it has been revealed that then-prime minister and CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli personally directed officials to divide the multi-billion-rupee e-passport procurement project into two distinct contract packages.
The revelation came after a formal statement given to the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) by Pushkar Raj Nepal, who was the undersecretary (law) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the procurement period.
In a statement filed with the anti-graft body, Nepal said a high-level meeting was held inside the prime minister's chamber. The meeting was attended by the foreign secretary, joint secretaries, technical teams from the Department of Passports, secretaries from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and external experts.
"The prime minister (Oli) himself told us clearly that the project should be done in two packages," reads the undersecretary Nepal's statement. "He said the project would be divided to ensure more transparency, prevent market monopoly, increase competitiveness and eventually be more cost-effective for the state."
Nepal, on the other hand, expressed strong scepticism about the sudden shift to electronic passports, questioning the true motivation for the transition. He stated that the country's existing machine readable passport (MRP) system was perfectly functional and did not require immediate replacement. "What is the hidden secret behind rushing this e-passport launch, and who pushed for it? This requires a thorough investigation," his statement read.
Following the split directive, the lucrative contracts were divided last year when the CPN-UML and the Nepali Congress (NC) were sharing power in a coalition government. At the time of the deal, CPN-UML Chairman Oli was the prime minister, and Arzu Rana Deuba, the wife of former Nepali Congress president Sher Bahadur Deuba, was the foreign minister.
Subsequently, two big contracts were awarded to German firms. Mühlbauer ID Services bagged a package worth Rs 1.55 billion. Manindra Raj Malla, the company's representative in Nepal, is well-known for his close ties to the CPN-UML. Veridos secured a much larger package worth Rs 6.55 billion. Siddhartha Thapa,
Veridos' local representative, is closely aligned with the Nepali Congress. Thapa is the son of Sunil Bahadur Thapa, an influential Nepali Congress leader and member of the National Assembly.
The alignment of these specific firms with the ruling coalition partners at the time has fuelled long-standing allegations that the contracts were divided and distributed solely for political reasons.
Hence, CIAA has launched a full-fledged prosecution, filing a formal charge sheet with the Special Court. The anti-graft watchdog asserts that severe institutional corruption and structural irregularities were cooked into the project from the very initial stages of the bidding process.
According to investigators, public officials, bureaucrats, suppliers, and local agents actively collaborated to carry out the fraudulent scheme. As per the charge sheet, the defendants purposefully altered the public tender's pre-approved criteria and terms to ensure that the contracts were awarded to specific German firms. This manipulation violated both the Public Procurement Act (2006) and the Public Procurement Regulations (2007).
The CIAA also stated that the evaluation committee manipulated technical and financial bids to deliver fraudulent recommendations. Following these rigged decisions, agreements were signed and partial financial advances were made to Mühlbauer and Veridos, resulting in massive losses for the state treasury.
The CIAA has estimated the total financial misappropriation in this passport printing scam at more than Rs 10.13 billion and is seeking maximum legal penalties against the involved public officials and corporate representatives.
The charge sheet points out that the accused had knowingly ignored the fact that the splitting of the project would lead to complete uselessness of the existing and working software of the state and the losses caused would be to the tune of billions of rupees in no time. To avoid triggering regulatory red flags, the accused allegedly set up hand-picked sub-committees, from which they extracted engineered and misleading reports, and used mutual collusion to award the contracts to preferred international firms.
While the CIAA in its final decision has said it has started a separate and independent probe against former foreign minister Rana for her role of oversight, the document is conspicuously silent about starting any formal legal proceedings against former PM Oli, whose name has been specifically used to explain the birth of the scam.