Though officials have remained tight-lipped over the incident, myrepublica.com has learnt that Poudel was arrested on Wednesday from the Nepal Investment Bank at Durbar Marg while he was out to withdraw cash from his dollar account deposit of US$ 100,000. [break]
"As soon as he came to the bank to withdraw the money our top management informed the police leading to his arrest," said a bank staff.
Investigating officers started interrogating Poudel soon after his arrest. "He has so far denied having any connection with the firm and his uncle´s business of importing raw wool from Tibet. He isn´t speaking much," said an official.
However, intensive attempts being made by agencies to nab Narayan Poudel, uncle of Suman Poudel, and Padam Bahadur Raut, two owners of the firm, have so far been unsuccessful as they seem to have fled from Kathmandu Valley.
Suman Poudel, one of the owners of New Dahal Business Enterprises, was arrested from Nepal Investment Bank, Durbar Marg, while he was out there to withdraw remaining US$ 100,000 from his account.
New Dahal Business Enterprises, owned by Poudel and Raut, has been involved in siphoning off US$ 30 million to Hong Kong based banks under the pretext of importing raw wool from Tibet. Finanace Ministry and Nepal Rastra Bank officials are investing several firms involved in the capital flight.
Investigation widens scope
Meanwhile, investigators have widened the scope of their investigations and have started looking into the real masters in the whole affair. We suspect that the persons and firms that have so far been identified are just carriers working for financial benefit, but we think there are a number of real masters who were illegally taking huge amounts of money out of the country under the pretext of importing raw wool from Tibet.
Another area of investigation will be how the illicit traders managed to produce fake customs declaration forms and foreign exchange regulation forms for months on end without being traced by the customs department and local draft issuing banks, said the source.
They managed to bring genuine and fake documents together while submitting them at the banks to close their transactions, said the source. As per the law, draft/TT obtaining parties are required to submit the documents within 180 days of their issuance as proof that goods have entered the country.
The persons and firms that have so far been identified could be just carriers working for financial benefit, but real masters behind the capital flight could be others.
Initial investigations have found that the receipts for Import Service Fee that the wool importing parties submitted at the banks were genuine but they mixed them up with fake forms to fool local banks. Since customs receipts are printed at the security press, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to produce fake receipts.
However, investigators were quick to point out that the banks themselves were not completely free of blame. Some banks were found accepting heavily tampered documents. In some photocopies of the required documents submitted by importing parties the descriptions of imported goods were found overlapped by other documents, making it impossible to read the detailed descriptions.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Surendra Pandey told myrepublica.com that attention has been drawn toward reports of huge amounts of capital flight to Hong Kong and said that he has instructed all agencies concerned to speed up investigations.
prem@myrepublica.com
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