KATHMANDU, APRIL 11
The National Assembly passed two bills - The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (Third Amendment) Bill and Prevention of Corruption (First Amendment) Bill - yesterday proposing to bring private institutions, particularly banks and banking institutions under the scope of the anti-corruption body which were hitherto not under its ambit.
At present, the CIAA can probe corruption committed by public post holders who work for public institutions.
Apart from defining fully or partially owned public agencies as public institutions, the two bills state that public institutions also mean banks, financial institution, insurance institutions, medical colleges, hospitals affiliated to medical colleges, other colleges, public limited companies, government funded bodies or projects or any organisation designated as public institution by the government by notification in the Nepal Gazette.
Under the existing CIAA Act and Prevention of Corruption Act private banks and institutions are not under the ambit of the CIAA. These two bills that originated in the NA will now go to the House of Representatives, which can pass them with or without changes. Only then can these two bills become laws.
Senior Advocate Satish Krishna Kharel said, "Universal worldwide practice is that corrupt practices whether by public post holder or private post holder are defined as corruption.
Under the existing law in Nepal, if a public post holder demands bribe from somebody for recruiting him/ her, that is considered corruption, but if a private post holder seeks bribe in the same way, that is not defined as corruption," he said and added that in principle all corrupt practices should be prohibited and penalised by law.
Article 239(1) of the constitution limits the power of the CIAA to investigate corruption only against 'public post holders' so assigning the CIAA also to investigate corruption against private parties is not within the CIAA's jurisdiction, and if a law now defines private entities as public entities that will not be in consonance with the constitutional provision, he argued.
Kharel said that from the time of the constitution of 1990, the CIAA was mooted with two objectives - first was that it would play the role of an ombudsman making the government correct improper actions and conduct, and second was to investigate corruption - but the framers of the current constitution clipped the CIAA's wings by amending its power to function as Ombudsman.
He said stakeholders would realise soon that all kinds of corruption cases should not be put under the CIAA's jurisdiction and investigation of only high-level corruption cases should be given to CIAA.
As for some cases, including the private sector, corruption shall be put under the jurisdiction of institutions like anti-corruption police or a specialised wing of the Nepal Police. He also added if corruption related to private entities' were added to the prevailing anti-corruption statute, the responsibility of investigation of such cases could not be given to the CIAA because of its constitutional limitation, and it should rather be given to some other law enforcement agencies.
Human Rights activist Charan Prasai said corruption leads to violation of human rights and whoever commits corruption should be punished.
"Any corrupt practice whether committed by public post holder or private post holder is corruption and new laws should make provisions to prosecute and punish corrupt behaviour," he argued.
He further said cooperative banks had robbed ordinary citizens and it would be right to bring such institutions under the CIAA's ambit.
Prasai, however, said that there should be enough safeguard in the bill to discourage anti-corruption agencies from maliciously targeting innocent people.
A version of this article appears in the print on April 13, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
