KATHMANDU: The outgoing Finance Minister Janardan Sharma has claimed that no unauthorized persons were involved in the preparation of the FY 2022/23 budget.
He made this claim in the meeting of the Parliamentary Investigation Special Committee, which was formed to investigate Sharma, who was accused of allowing unauthorized persons to enter during the preparation of the budget.
He refuted the allegations against him and informed that the budget was prepared based on established values and methods.
In the meeting of the committee, Sharma said, “It is easy to know who entered and who left. We have security personnel and other standards in the ministry.”
Sharma resigned from the post of finance minister on July 6 after he was accused of having unauthorized people participate in the preparation of the budget for the financial year 2022/23 and changing the tax rate on their advice.
The main opposition party CPN UML has demanded immediate resignation of the Finance Minister Sharma and forming of parliamentary investigation team.
CPN UML has alleged that the outsiders played on the tax rate, which was beneficial to certain business house.
However, the parliamentary committee has questioned many officials of the Finance Ministry, including some journalists who broke the news. The committee has seized the CCTV hard-drive from the ministry and has sent it to Nepal Police’s lab for further investigation. So far, the committee has failed to recover the CCTV footage.
