Kathmandu, June 23: The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), a constitutional body to investigate and lodge cases in the court, has filed a corruption case in Special Court against Chief Secretary Dr. Baikuntha Aryal on the charge of irregularities in the budget allocation of the Security Printing Center and the purchase of excise stickers.
As soon as the charge sheet was registered, Chief Secretary Dr. Aryal will be automatically suspended from the post. This is probably the first case in the civil service history of Nepal where a corruption case has been filed against the sitting Chief Secretary, the highest post in civil service.
A corruption case has also been filed against Bikal Paudel who was dismissed from the Security Printing Center earlier.
Dhan Bahadur Karki, the spokesperson of the Special Court, informed that the authority has demanded Rs 386.67 million from 12 persons including Chief Secretary Dr Aryal.
When Dr Aryal was the Secretary of the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, he was involved in allocating a large amount of money in the name of Security Printing Center without completing the basic process of selecting the scheme. However, Dr Aryal was denying his involvement in this and other cases of corruption but evidences that surfaced in the media showed that he was receiving kickback from different unknown parties.
The Security Printing Center, which has secured more resources than the annual budget of the Ministry of Communications, then imported a printer to proceed with the printing of excise duty stickers. Later, Security Printing Center also awarded the contract to a third party. The authority has raised questions about this contract.
According to the charge sheet, CIAA has also made defendants to Ritesh Shakya, Tank Pandey, Bikal Paudel, Ganesh Bikram Shahi, Safal Shrestha, Rabindra Prasad Paudel, Bishnu Prasad Gautam, Hari Ballav Ghimire, Shakti Prasad Shrestha, Keshav Sharma for their involvement in various decisions and transactions.
Media fraternity were raising this issue for a long time.
The main culprits Mr Bikal Paudel and Mr Sunil Paudel have been facing several charges of corruption including purchasing of Terramox technology, MDMS and others.
