The house of former shareholder of Galaxy Television and former AIG Chhabi Lal Joshi has been raided in connection to fraud at the Pokhara-based Surya Darshan Savings and Credit Cooperative Limited.
A team of Kathmandu Police has raided Joshi’s house at Shankhamul on Wednesday on request of the Kaski Police. The house was used as office of Nature Herbs Pvt Ltd operated by Chairman of Surya Darshan and Galaxy Television GB Rai, according to the police.
The Kaski Police, after being informed in course of collecting statements from those arrested in the scam that electronic record of important documents related to the cooperative were in Kathmandu, had on Wednesday written to the Kathmandu Police to recover the server that contained the electronic records, according to Chief of Kaski Police SP Mohan Kumar Thapa.
The Kathmandu Police recovered four servers after raiding Joshi’s house at Shankhamul on Wednesday and will hand them over to the Kaski Police Thursday itself.
Joshi had 35 percent stake in Galaxy, GB Rai 50 percent and Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) President Rabi Lamichhane 15 percent as sweat equity. Joshi had played an important role to convince Lamichhane to join Galaxy.
Galaxy 4K Television had illegally taken loans from cooperatives when Lamichhane was its managing director (MD) and shareholder.
Clause 50 of the Cooperatives Act 2017 stipulates that a cooperative can accept deposit only from its members, and lend to only its members. Similarly, the Company Directive 2015 also prohibits a private company from acquiring shares of a cooperative and stipulates that even the shares acquired before the directive came into force be transferred to others within a year. It also prohibits a company from borrowing from a cooperative.
But Gorkha Media Company that owned Galaxy 4K has been found to have illegally taken loan of Rs 100 million from Suryadarshan Cooperative of Pokhara. The cooperative was opened by promoter of Gorkha Media GB (Gitendra) Rai.
The police have already got the Interpol to issue a diffusion notice against GB Rai, Than Bahadur Buda Magar and Bhupendra Rai who are absconding after being implicated in the scam.
