Worried about diplomatic shame that the incident will bring to the nation, the ministry has asked the mission to investigate how Gopi Krishna Prasain and Hum Raj Lamsal got the British visas from the UK´s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) as embassy staffers though they are not associated with the mission. They have reportedly been working at restaurants. [break]
Sources at MoFA and the embassy told Republica that Prasain and Lamsal managed to get the British visas from the FCO after Deputy Chief of Mission Jhabindra Prasad Aryal allegedly wrote letters to the FCO certifying that the duo were embassy staffers. Aryal has denied the charge.
Lamsal had reached London some three years ago to work as a domestic help for Aryal. But he was sacked after getting into a brawl with an embassy staffer some two years ago, an official at MoFA told Republica. British diplomatic security personnel had taken the case as a criminal one after then Ambassador Murari Raj Sharma reported the case to British police. Aryal recommended Lamsal to the FCO for a visa after the police case.
Similarly, Prasain, whose brother Pralahad Prasain is currently deputy chief of mission in Bangkok, reached the UK on a tourist visa some four years ago. Sources said he reached London from Germany where his brother worked at the Nepali Embassy, then located in Bonn.
"Yes, I reached London on a tourist visa," Prasain confessed to Republica over the phone, saying that he now holds the kind of visa that the FCO issues to attendants of officials working at foreign diplomatic missions in the UK.
Asked over the phone on Wednesday how he managed to get such a visa, he first tried to be evasive, saying he was busy at work that afternoon. But he finally said, "You better ask Jhabindra sir [deputy chief of mission] for details."
Aryal claimed that he appointed Prasain as his domestic help after his previous attendant, Lamsal, was sacked following the brawl and a replacement from Nepal had not yet reached London.
However, knowledgeable sources at the ministry and at the embassy said Prasain never worked as Aryal´s attendant and Aryal certified Prasain as an embassy staffer only to get him the visa.
Prasain is not the last one to work as a domestic help for the deputy chief at the Nepali mission in London. Aryal got another man, Nischal Aryal, from Nepal to work at his residence, saying his previous domestic had been sacked.
A foreign ministry official above the rank of gazetted third class is allowed to take along just one attendant during a posting of four years at missions abroad.
After the ministry received the complaint about the embassy´s role in getting visas for Lamsal and Prasain, it directed the embassy on September 10 to probe the incident. Republica has a copy of the ministry´s directive.
The mission is yet to reply to the ministry. A source at the embassy told Republica on condition of anonymity that a probe is underway. The source, however, declined to give any details of progress in the probe.
Meanwhile, the incident has drawn expressions of concern from the British embassy in Kathmandu. Asked to comment, an official at the embassy said, "We take all allegations of visa fraud very seriously."
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