KATHMANDU, July 10: The Department of Cooperatives (DoC) has asked the cooperatives to send the details of the individuals and institutions that have taken loans worth over Rs 10 million from the cooperatives concerned.

Issuing a public notice, the sector’s regulator has asked the concerned cooperatives to send the details within the next 30 days. Likewise, the cooperatives have been asked to forward details of the three generations and copies of citizenship certificates of their board of directors, account committee members and managers. Likewise, the cooperatives are also mandated to send their financial details including the minutes of the annual general meeting of the fiscal year 2021/22.

DoC Registrar Namaraj Ghimire said they took the step citing an increasing number of complaints from the members who failed to get back their money deposited in the cooperatives. “We cannot let go of the interest of the depositors just to protect the cooperatives that have landed in financial crisis,” he said.

The government has kept cooperatives under high priority, considering it as one of the three pillars of the country’s economic system. However, in many cases, cooperatives are found to have landed in problems when the operators consider fulfilling personal interests rather than overall objectives of the community members.

According to the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police, it has filed five cases against cooperatives that are found embezzling the depositors’ money worth more than Rs 2.44 billion in the past three and a half months. On the charge, the CIB has arrested 13 individuals.

Although the cases of cooperatives swindling the depositors’ money surfaced around one and a half decades ago, similar cases are on the rise in recent days. Of late, Shiva Shikhar Multipurpose Cooperative and Tulasi Multipurpose Cooperative have been found involved in perhaps one of the biggest embezzlements. These cooperatives have been accused of misappropriating over Rs 12.23 billion of 189,879 member depositors.

According to the government records, around 500 cooperatives have now landed in financial crisis, mainly due to the cash strap amid ongoing economic recession. According to the CIB, the problem in cooperatives has also dragged around a dozen of commercial banks, which have invested in the cooperatives, into financial problems.

The CIB has now been investigating cooperatives including Shiva Shikhar, Tulasi, Pashupati, Supreme, Gautam Shree, Baraha, Ekatabaddha, Deurali and Image, among others, which have failed to return the money of their depositors. The operators of these cooperatives are found to have taken credit worth billions of rupees from the commercial banks.

 
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