The Special Court has convicted two former chairpersons of the Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) of corruption in the procurement of the Mobile Device Management System (MDMS).
A bench comprising Special Court Chair Tek Narayan Kunwar and Justices Ritendra Thapa and Bidur Koirala delivered the verdict on Thursday, March 6.
In March last year, the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) filed a corruption case against 19 individuals and the joint venture (JV) of Nuemera (M) Sdn. Bhd. (Malaysia), Namaste Global Comm Pte. Ltd. (Singapore), and OSI Digital Pvt. Ltd. (India).
Alongside former NTA chairpersons Digambar Jha and Purushottam Khanal, the court found the foreign JV involved in the procurement process—and the group chairman of its lead partner—guilty of irregularities.
The anti-corruption body had sought compensation of Rs 919.8 million from the defendants and an additional penalty of Rs 232 million. However, the court ruled that Rs 232 million was embezzled in the MDMS procurement process and ordered Jha, Khanal, the JV, and the Group Chairman of its lead company to forfeit Rs 58.01 million each.
Jha, Khanal, and Mohd Noor Amin Bin Mohd Noor Khan (also known as Dakut Mohd Noor Amin), the group chair of Nuemera (M) Sdn. Bhd., were each sentenced to one year in prison. Additionally, the court imposed an extra one-month prison sentence on Jha and Khanal for violating legal procedures and causing financial losses to the government while serving as NTA chairpersons.
However, several defendants, including Ananda Raj Khanal, Dipesh Acharya, Surendra Lal Hada, Min Prasad Aryal, Achyutananda Mishra, Revati Ram Panth, Sandip Adhikari, Binod Chandra Shrestha, Surya Prasad Lamichhane, Pratiksha Poudel, Vijay Kumar Ray Yadav, and Nirajan Koirala, were acquitted.
According to NTA, the MDMS was launched in September 2022 to regulate illegal mobile imports . It repeatedly issued notices requiring all mobile devices brought from abroad or purchased locally to be registered in the system or face deactivation.
In its charge sheet, the CIAA had accused the defendants of procuring the MDMS system with malicious intent. The process, it claimed, was rushed without proper cost estimation, and the bid was accepted despite showing unnaturally high operational costs.
