The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) has filed a case against 32 individuals including former minister Jeevan Bahadur Shahi charging them with corruption in the procurement of two widebody aircraft.
The CIAA filed the case at the Special Court on Thursday seeking Rs 1.47 billion ($13.39 million) in claims from the accused, according to the court’s assistant spokesperson Yagya Raj Regmi.
Along with former minister Shahi, the anti-graft body has also named former general manager of Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) Sugat Ratna Kansakar, the then director general of Department of Customs Shishir Dhungana, Joint Secretary and the then NAC board member Buddhi Sagar Lamichhane, Tourism Secretary and the then NAC board chairman Shankar Prasad Adhikari, the then general manager of Department of Money Laundering Investigation and NAC board member Jeevan Prakash Sitaula, the then acting director of NAC Ramhari Sharma Sedhain, the then acting director and present deputy general manager Janak Raj Kalakheti, and the then NAC deputy director Prabhas Kumar Karmacharya as defendants in the case.
Similary, the CIAA has charged the aircraft suppliers with corruption. They include British national Deepak Sharma, president of International Supply Chain, AAR Corp Inc, USA; German national Christian Nuehlen, director of Hifly X Ireland Limited and representative of German Aviation Capital Germany; Oleg Calistru, finance director of German Aviation Capital Germany; John M Holmes, president and CEO of AAR International Inc USA; Ana Topa, managing director of German Aviation Capital GMBH Germany; Paulo Mirpuri, president of Hifly Airlines Portugal; Gerald Thornton, director of Hifly X Ireland Limited; Markus Radbruch, head of aviation at Norton Rose Fulbright LLP Germany, and Ralf Springer, senior consultant at Norton Rose Fulbright.
The NAC formed a sub-committee under Kansakar on January 18, 2016, for procurement of new planes. The government on September 14, 2016 wrote to the NAC stating it would provide guarantee for procurement of airplanes.
The NAC on September 26 in the same year published a 45-day notice for procurement of two Airbus planes. The notice had invited bids for Airbus A 330-200 planes with Rolls-Royce Trent 772B engines that have clocked 1,000 flights hours.
The sub-committee formed by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament concluded in its report that inviting bids for old planes and specifying the kind of engines violated the Public Procurement Act that prohibits mention of a particular brand, trademark, patent, design or manufacturer while preparing specifications except when there is no other option. It also took exception to procurement of the planes from an agent instead of procuring it directly from the manufacturer.
The NAC acquired the first wide-body plane on June 28 and the second on July 26, 2017. The procurement process came under the scanner after it was revealed that the NAC ahd procured planes with maximum takeoff weight of 230 tons after formulating a business plan to procure those with 242 tons.
The PAC had concluded after investigation in 2018 that the NAC had suffered a loss of Rs 4.35 billion in the procurement.
