CIAA widens e-passport probe to include former Foreign Minister Arzu Rana Deuba

The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) has brought former Foreign Minister Arzu Rana Deuba within the scope of its investigation into last year’s e-passport procurement process.

On June 18, a team of investigators visited the Budhanilkantha residence of former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, which was damaged during the September 9 General Protests, to serve a summons requiring his wife, Arzu Rana Deuba, to appear for questioning.

Under legal procedure, when a person to be called for questioning cannot be reached, the summons must be served at their permanent registered address.

Ward Chair of Budhanilkantha Municipality-2, Rajendra Shrestha, confirmed that the CIAA team had served the summons outside the compound of the Deuba residence. He told OnlineKhabar that after no member of the Deuba family was found at the premises, the CIAA team contacted Bhanu Deuba, personal secretary to former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, by phone to notify him of the service. The summons procedure requires the mandatory presence of elected ward representatives from the relevant municipality.

The CIAA is advancing its investigation into allegations that an unqualified company secured the contract at a higher price through the intervention of the then-Foreign Minister.

The Deuba couple had gone to Singapore for medical treatment before the March 5 Parliamentary Elections and have not returned to Nepal. Just two days ago, they sent letters to the Department of Money Laundering Investigation and the Special Court, informing them that they plan to return to Nepal in two months.

Arzu’s role in the passport procurement

According to documents obtained from senior sources close to the CIAA, there is no written directive or formal decision traceable to former Foreign Minister Arzu Deuba in the passport procurement process. Procurement decisions of this nature are typically concluded at the level of the head of office (the Director General of the Department of Passports), and officials at higher levels would not normally have any documented involvement.

So on what basis has the CIAA brought the then Foreign Minister into the investigation?

According to a source close to the CIAA, although no paperwork shows her involvement, complaints have been filed alleging that not only Arzu, but also her son Jayveer Deuba, were involved in designing the contract structure, packaging the tender, and coordinating among contractors.

“In the course of that, certain devices were seized, and phone contacts were analysed,” the source says. “On that basis, we needed to investigate her as well, which is why we attempted to call her in for a statement.”

Before the Department of Passports awarded the passport contract, the CIAA’s investigating team had received information about repeated meetings between a group including Jayveer Deuba (son of the Deuba couple), Siddhartha Thapa (son of Sunil Thapa, then political advisor to President Ram Chandra Paudel), and Director General of Passports Tirth Raj Aryal.

According to the source, “On that basis as well, one of the investigation teams proceeded toward the Deuba residence.”

Losses of nearly 1 billion

According to complaints and review petitions submitted to the CIAA, various parliamentary committees, and other bodies, irregularities began during the tender’s technical evaluation. The tender documents required blade servers, but the companies shortlisted proposed rack servers and the tender evaluation accepted this substitution. A complainant has argued that rack servers are an older and less effective technology than blade servers, and that this manipulation alone resulted in a difference of approximately NPR 100 million.

On that point, six of the 12 members of the technical sub-committee that evaluated the documents refused to sign and walked out. A petition filed by competing company Idemia with the Public Procurement Monitoring Office stated, “It was wrong to include technically unqualified bidders in the financial proposal stage.”

The Department of Passports awarded the contract to Mühlbauer and Veridos at NPR 8.06 billion. Idemia claimed it had submitted a bid NPR 289.5 million lower.

The two contract packages overlap in some tasks and materials, yet the winning companies presented these as separate items, inflating costs to the department’s detriment, the petition alleged. It claims that this alone caused a difference of NPR 712.4 million and that the total excess burden on the state treasury across the two passport contract packages amounts to nearly one billion rupees.

The complaint also contends that requiring payment in euros imposed additional costs on Nepal  though this claim was rejected by the Director General of Passports and by the Public Procurement Monitoring Office. Writ petitions challenging those decisions remain pending before the Supreme Court.

Statements being recorded

Over the past three days, the CIAA has arrested and is investigating Director General of Passports Tirth Raj Aryal, Director Sunil Kumar KC, CEO of Namaste Global Kaam Pvt. Ltd. Manindra Raj Malla, and former accounts officer of the Department of Passports Tulsi Prasad Acharya.

Additionally, the CIAA is recording statements from more than ten individuals, including Joint Secretary (Information Technology) Mukesh Regmi, Directors Somesh Thapa and Dhruba Tiwari, computer engineer Subas Dhakal, and others.

A source close to the CIAA said that Siddhartha Thapa, who had already been taken into security custody but was released citing family reasons, has since become unreachable. The CIAA is now investigating around 40 individuals in total.

A CIAA official stated that work is progressing with the aim of concluding the investigation within a week at most. According to him, given that the country’s chief executive has treated the matter as serious and shown personal interest in it, the CIAA has also added staffing to advance the investigation.

“The case should be resolved in the early days of next week,” the official says.

Although complaints about this matter had been filed at the CIAA since last year, questions had been raised about why no investigation had been initiated.

The Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers had requisitioned the relevant file from the Department of Passports and studied it. Following that, at a meeting to which the Director General of Passports and other officials were summoned, CIAA Chief Commissioner Prem Kumar Rai and other commissioners were also present.

It was at that point that Prime Minister Balen Shah had expressed dissatisfaction with the CIAA’s pace of work, saying there had been “delays in investigating a file linked to sensitive subject matter.”

It was from that very day that the CIAA arrested Director General Aryal and others, accelerating the investigation.