The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) has filed corruption charges against 17 individuals--including current and former senior officials of Nepal Telecom (NT)--and a Chinese firm , alleging irregularities in procurement process for the upgradation of NT's billing system.

The chargesheet was submitted to the Special Court on Sunday, June 8. 

According to the CIAA, the constitutional anti-graft body, the case centers the procurement of a billing system designed to integrate Nepal Telecom’s billing for various services—including GSM mobile, fiber internet, leased lines, and both wireline and wireless systems—into a single, real-time billing platform.

CIAA spokesperson Rajendra Kumar Paudel said the accused are suspected of deliberately manipulating the procurement process with malicious intent, resulting in the misappropriation of public funds. The anti-graft body has claimed that the actions of the accused led to an embezzlement of Rs 334.8 million.

Those charged include former Managing Director (MD) of Nepal Telecom Sunil Paudel, current MD Sangita Pahadee, former Chief Technical Officer Pratibha Shrestha and former Chief Financial Officer Rajendra Shrestha.

Also named in the chargesheet are former Chief Operating Officer Jhabindra Lal Upadhyaya, former Director Binita Shrestha, Acting Director Amul Pradhan, former Manager Devendra Khatiwada, former Deputy Manager Rajiv Kumar KC, as well as Santosh Kumar Shrestha, Nawal Chaudhary, Muktiprasad Aryal, Hemprabha Rampratap Karn, and Paramatma Bhattarai.

In addition to Nepal Telecom officials, the CIAA has named the Chinese firm AsiaInfo Yunghang Software (Beijing) Limited—formerly AsiaInfo-Linkage Technologies (China) Inc.—which had signed a contract with Nepal Telecom on December 21, 2011, for the supply of the ‘Convergent Real-Time Billing & Customer Support (CRTB\&CS)’ system.

Individuals from the company named in the chargesheet include teh Senior Director of the company Long Yong; Huang Wei, then Operations/Project Manager of CRTB\&CS Project Office in Kathmandu; and Shailesh Shrestha, Director of the firm’s local agent, Arniko International Pvt. Ltd.

The CIAA has accused the foreign firm and its representatives of colluding with Nepal Telecom officials to defraud the state-owned enterprise.