Seizing Rs 250 million in foreign currency: How the operation unfolded

KATHMANDU, March 20:  At around 9:30 pm on Monday, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Anil Ghimire at the Kathmandu Valley Crime Investigation Office (KVCIO) received a tip-off from a reliable informant that a large sum of foreign currency was soon being illegally transported from Nepal to China in a truck by a certain individual also known as ‘fuche’.

Having received information about the truck and the suspect, the KVCIO ran a profile check of the suspect and started locating the vehicle. Upon having pinpointed the location of the vehicle, a police team started surveilling it. 

After the team of eight police officials led by DSP Ghimire was alerted about the previous criminal activity of gold smuggling in a truck by the suspect eight years ago, they intercepted the vehicle with registration number Na 7 Kha 1652 at around 11 pm on Monday at Jhor in Tokha Municipality on the northern outskirts of Kathmandu.

The suspect Kushang Lama, 43, a permanent resident of Bhotekoshi Rural Municipality, Sindhupalchowk, currently residing in a rented house in Gokarna, Kathmandu, was earlier arrested in possession of seven kilograms of gold from Kalanki on December 28, 2016 while illegally transporting the precious metal in a Hilux jeep with registration number BA 8 Cha 7420, which was traveling from Rasuwagadhi via Galchi to Kathmandu. He was released in 2021 after serving a sentence of five years in prison.

“Since the profile check on Lama showed his previous involvement in criminal activities, we had a strong suspicion that he might have been up to some other criminal activity,” DSP Ghimire told Republica. He added that the police team initiated a routine enquiry with Lama after apprehending him.

“Initially, he refrained from telling us about the money,” DSP Ghimire said, “However, after we pressed him by leveraging the information we had received, he revealed that a Chinese national had hidden some goods in the vehicle for smuggling.”

Having confirmed that the vehicle was indeed being used to smuggle ‘something’ to China, the police team impounded the truck and brought it to the KVCIO, Teku.

A group of police officials started inspecting the vehicle and dismantling the parts that were suspicious. “We exhausted the possible hiding locations in the truck using knowledge and experience from previous cases,” DSP Ghimire said.

Finally, after hours of checking, the police, at around 3 am in the night, found 60 bundles of notes concealed beneath the driver's seat and inside a false bottom built in the truck's cabin. The seized foreign currency included Euros and US dollars.

The euros, in denominations of 50, 100, 200, and 500, amounted to 1.38 million euros. The dollars, in denominations of 50 and 100, totaled USD 320,850. At the current exchange rate, the total value of the seized currency is Rs 250.16 million.

Lama fabricated the story

According to DSP Ghimire, Lama’s initial story that a Chinese national had hidden ‘something’ in his truck without his knowledge was an attempt to run the police in circles at a dead end. 

“As it is evident from his previous criminal activity, this was not his first rodeo, he certainly knew that the truck was carrying the foreign currency,” he said.

Police’s preliminary investigation revealed that the truck is legally owned by Lama’s mother and that Lama had kept the vehicle in a garage for 20 days to paint it and give it a new look while the money was being loaded. Driver Lama claimed that someone loaded the money into his truck, which was parked in the Samakhusi area of ​​Kathmandu.

Spokesperson for the KVCIO, Superintendent of Police (SP) Kaji Kumar Acharya told Republica that it is more likely that Lama was contracted the smuggling task by his jail-mate while he served five years in prison.

Lama’s intentional involvement in the foreign currency smuggling has also been suggested by police sources who claimed that Lama planned to leave the truck at Rasuwagadhi and have someone else with a Chinese visa cross the Nepal-China border and take the truck to Kerung. Preliminary investigation found that the seized US dollars and euros were meant for delivery to Kerung, China, in exchange for gold.

In addition, police suspect that the foreign currency was possibly illegally exchanged through private currency exchanges. 

SP Acharya informed Republcia that the KVCIO are also focused on identifying the money's owner and verifying if the funds are related to gold smuggling operations due to Lama’s past conviction in smuggling gold.

“We are currently examining the calls and messages sent via Lama’s phone to figure out who else was involved in this racket,” he said, “It seems likely that the currency was received from illegal money exchanges.”

The money is real

Ever since the news of the illegal foreign currency bust surfaced on various news outlets, netizens have been speculating that the currency would soon be declared counterfeit in an attempt by the corrupt individuals at various related governmental bodies to claim the money.

However, the KVCIO has confirmed that it has verified the legitimacy of the currency via multiple methods. SP Acharya revealed that the currency has been verified by manual as well as technical methods. DSP Ghimire also confirmed that the money was verified and counted under CCTV surveillance in presence of the chief of the KVCIO Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Ramesh Basnet.