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Kathmandu Tuesday November 07, 2000 Kartik 22, 2057.
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LC convicts punished by
court First ever victory for CIAA
By Chet Bahadur Singh and Harihar Yogi
KATHMANDU, Nov 6 - Appellate Court of Patan
today awarded one year prison term and fines equal to the embezzled amount to the seven
owners of different business firms and two employees of Rastriya Banijya Bank who were
convicted in the infamous Letter of Credit(LC) scam.
This is the first case, the Commission for
Investigation of Abuse of Authority has ever won. The court has awarded all the named, one
year each in prison. Among them, Ram Kumar Agrawal Bhadrapure has been fined for Rs 9.45
million, Dhruba Dahal for 10.3 million and Manoj Khadka for Rs 10.8 million. The fines
were equivalent to the amount embezzled by each of the accused.
CIAA had filed a case charging Agrawal and
others of violating foreign currency laws by creating nine different firms, which is
against the limit of Rs 10 million bank guarantee issued by the bank.
CIAA has filed a case against twelve
persons including five Bank officials accusing of the embezzlement of LC amounting to Rs
90 million. The businessmen had prepared forged LC papers and embezzled foreign currency
worth US$ 1.66 million in February 1995.
Similarly, today the court also fined Netra
Bahadur Sapkota Rs 11.9 million, Bum Bahadur Tamang Rs 12 million, Navaraj Khatri Rs 11.16
million and Ram Kumar Khadka Rs 10.9 million.
The court also sentenced to one year in
prison the bank's manager at that time Bal Krishna Adhikari and the accountant Surendra
Lal Rajbhandari. In case the fines amounting to 14 million slapped on the convicted
businessmen can not be recovered then the court has ordered it to be collected from the
Accountant Raj Bhandari. The remaining 60 million is to be collected from manager
Adhikari.
The bank has acquitted Guru Prasad Neupane,
NRB's chairman and general manager at that time, Sudarshan Krishna Shrestha, accountant,
Ram Bhakta Devkota, LC in-charge at Bishal Bazaar branch of the NRB. The court in its
verdict said they had worked within their jurisdiction.
Out of the 91 LCs worth 50 thousand dollars
in value, Ram Kumar Agrawal had the largest numbers of them. Agrawal had been provided the
loan of Rs 80 million in violation to the upper limit of Rs 10 million.
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