High-level corruption exposed: Five ex-ministers, top bureaucrats indicted over China-funded Pokhara airport

Kathmandu: Nepal’s anti-graft body on Sunday filed corruption cases at the Special Court against 55 individuals, including five former ministers and several former government secretaries, and a Chinese construction company in connection with irregularities in the construction of the Pokhara Regional International Airport.

The China-funded Pokhara International Airport in western Pokhara has long been mired in controversy over alleged irregularities. Finally, the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), the constitutional anti-corruption body, registered the corruption cases against them in court. It is one of several corruption cases that have plagued projects involving Chinese contractors or suppliers in Nepal.

The corruption cases were filed based on an estimated loss of around 74.34 million US dollars (NPR 8.36 billion). Among those facing charges are former ministers Post Bahadur Bogati (deceased), Ram Sharan Mahat, Deepak Chandra Amatya, Ram Kumar Shrestha, and Bhim Prasad Acharya. Nepali Congress leader Mahat was the finance minister at the time the alleged corruption occurred, while the remaining four were former tourism ministers.

Several government secretaries, including Ramkrishna Timilsena, a former registrar of the Supreme Court, along with Sushil Ghimire, Suman Sharma, Bheshraj Sharma, Sureshman Shrestha, Madhukumar Marasini, and others, have also been named as defendants.

Additionally, suspended Director General of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN), Pradip Adhikari, and former CAAN director Murari Bhandari, who have been charged in another corruption case regarding heliport construction, have been included as defendants. Chinese construction company, China CAMC Engineering Co Ltd, which built the airport and its officials, chairman Wang Bo and regional general manager Liu Shengcheng, have also been made defendants.

All of them have been charged with engaging in procurement of contractors by inflating the cost of the project unnaturally.

The project, whose contract was awarded for US$215.96 million, was funded by China’s Export-Import Bank. However, the project’s lack of revenue generation has become a major concern for the Nepali government, which must now repay the Chinese loan.

In May, a sub-committee under the Public Accounts Committee of the now-dissolved House of Representatives highlighted multiple irregularities in the project’s construction and in the tax exemptions provided to the construction company. Even though the airport was inaugurated on January 1, 2023, Pokhara continues to struggle to attract international airlines, raising concerns that the multi-million-dollar project could become a costly failure.

Only Himalaya Airlines, a Nepal-China joint-venture carrier, has been operating a scheduled flight once a week on the Pokhara-Lhasa route since March this year.

Earlier, a government-constituted high-level study committee identified flaws in the airport’s physical and navigational design that impose load restrictions on medium-haul flights, raising concerns about operational costs for airlines willing to operate regular flights through the airport.

“It has been understood that the airport requires a five per cent climb gradient for the Missed Approach Procedure Design Gradient, which is considered high for aircraft from a technical standpoint,” states the report of the High-Level Study and Recommendation Committee formed for reforms in the civil aviation sector.

“As a result, medium-haul jet aircraft are subject to a load penalty of four to six tonnes upon arrival, and weight restrictions also apply during departure due to the available field length, thereby affecting passenger and cargo-carrying capacity,” the report further mentions.

The report, produced by a committee headed by the current Minister for Industry, Commerce and Supply, Anil Kumar Sinha — then a retired Supreme Court judge — states that the current runway length (2,500 metres) imposes limitations on airline operations, particularly under conditions of high temperature, heavy aircraft weight, and/or low-pressure weather.

IANS