Payment gateway case: Paudel duo held

The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority arrested Sunil Paudel, former managing director at Nepal Telecom and Bikal Paudel, former executive director at Security Printing Center, on embezzlement charges on Wednesday. 

A CIAA team raided their homes, seized documents and took the two under control after they allegedly did not heed to the summons to record their statements vis-a-vis a corruption case filed at the Special Court against nine individuals on the charge of embezzling funds totaling Rs 232.75m during the procurement of software for National Payment Gateway in 2018 for $1.98m to digitize all financial transactions.

Those chargesheeted include government secretary Madhu Kumar Marasini, chair of the National Information Technology Center Sanjay Sharma, then executive director at the center Pranita Upadhyay, Paudel and others.  

The two are to be produced before the Special Court on Thursday.

In April last year, CIAA had moved the Special Court against Bikal Paudel and eight others, accusing them of embezzling around Rs 690.88m while procuring equipment for the printing press.

They were allegedly involved in preparation and approval of an unnatural cost estimate, accepting the supply of substandard electric transformers by going against the contract and making payment for a generator produced in a country other than that specified in the contract.

The equipment was procured for operating the security printing press that the government had planned to set up. The Office of the Auditor General had raised questions about the procurement process.

Even after filing the case, the two were dragged further into investigation on the suspicion of misappropriating the office’s resources and sending the property abroad.