Chaudhary washes hands of Mahalaxmi Sugar Mills

Kathmandu, November 6:

The ownership of the controversial Mahalaxmi Sugar Mills now rests solely with lawmaker Birendra Kumar Kanoudiya after prominent businessman Binod Kumar Chaudhary transferred all his shares in the mills to Kanoudiya.

“I have left the Sugar Mills and now its ownership rests solely with Kanoudiya,”

Chaudhary said at a press conference today.

The Credit Information Bureau had blacklisted the mills after it failed to pay nearly Rs 1.30 billion loan to the consortium banks.

The consortium banks — Rastriya Banijya Bank, Nepal Bank Limited, Himalayan Bank, Employees Provident Fund and Nepal Industrial Development Bank — have recently rescheduled the loan and removed the mills from the black list after Kanoudiya paid Rs 8 crore to the banks.

“I have nothing to say about the rescheduling of the loan. I am happy that the MSM has been delisted from the black list,” Chaudhary said, adding, “However, the tendency of the government and the banks in the past reflects that it’s not easy for the private sector to invest in the country.”

“All things that happened in the past were just a part of a drama staged to tarnish the image of the Chaudhary Group,” he alleged.

He added that the government and the banks were against the Chaudhary Group despite its contribution to the national economy for the last 135 years.

“There is a practice that the banks and the government target business sector even if they run businesses honestly,” he said, adding that the business group was targetted in the name of loan recovery.

“I want to forget all those things that happened in the past against the Chaudhary Group but I want that such dramas should not be staged against any business group in the future,” he added.

Chaudhary also said last year’s Parliameentary Public Accounts Committee’s report was a “sponsored report” to tarnish his image.

The report had projected Chaudhary as a major defaulter of the country. The PAC had also concluded that an SC verdict delisting the mills from the black list had promoted financial irregularities and the judges who gave the verdict should be impeached.

Governor of Nepal Rastra Bank Bijaya Nath Bhattarai, who was suspended after the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority filed a corruption case against him, had told the PAC that the SC verdict had violated the financial ethics and encouraged business groups to default bank loans.