National 4 (Spotlight Weekly)

“Our Actions Are Not On The Basis Of Political Ideology”

— Surya Nath Upadhyaya

At a time when many question the legality of the actions of the Commission of the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), SURYANATH UPADHYAYA, the chief of anti-corruption watchdog, spoke to Radio Nepal. Excerpts of his interview:

What is the nature of CIAA’s functions now?

Our functions have two kinds of nature. First nature is to prevent the corruption. In this area, we have done various efforts meeting with Director Generals and we have asked director generals to prepare guidelines to improve the transparency and accountability. We have also issued some guidelines to prevent the corruption in various administrative levels. In other complaints like accumulation of property beyond known sources of income by the civil servants of revenue, roads and other departments, we have been doing investigations and taking actions.

It is accused that the CIAA’s actions is directed to particular individuals of particular parties. How do you look at it?

Main thing is that our action is not directed at any particular individual on the basis of his political ideology. Our investigation started on many bases like the report of High-level Property Probe Commission and our own information. The actions against the political leaders are nothing new. The CIAA has been taking the actions against politicians for long. Even before my appointment as the chief commissioner, the CIAA was active. We will investigate as soon as we feel corruption has been committed. Our actions are not on the basis of political ideology.

There are reports that the CIAA arrests persons without adequate evidences and adequate homework with intention to harass them. How do you look at it?

You have said that there are reports about biasness. There are many kinds of reports but you have to see the facts. On the report of filing the case without collecting adequate investigation, facts speak differently - we are wining over 80 percent of the cases filed in the court. If we had not done proper investigation, there is no question we would be winning those many cases in the court. So far as the filing the cases with biasness and with intention to harass people are concerned, you can see that in the court’s decision. We always file the cases on the basis of our investigation. If our intention was just to harass the people, the court cannot justify our investigation and we would have lost those cases. On the one hand you said our actions are directed to harass people but on the other hand people organize rallies demanding stern actions against corruption. They come to hand over memorandum to us urging us to take actions. In such a situation, you have difficulty to distinguish which is right report and which is wrong.

It is said that the CIAA’s interventions in the development projects in the name of investigation of corruption is delaying the development activities. What do you say?

There are reports that most of the corruption takes place in the development projects. We have never suggested to stop the work during the process of investigations. We do investigation on our own and we have never interfered in the process of decision-making. No one has to fear if they have not done anything wrong. So many decisions have been taking place and we have not filed cases against all of them. We want to see free and fair implementation of the projects. We have already told the officials that we will take the actions in cases of particular nature. We have told the officials involved in the development projects how we will investigate cases of scandals and wrongdoings in particular projects.