Nepali prosecutors have charged 30 people, including two former cabinet ministers, with corruption in a case involving faking documents for Nepali nationals to enter the United States as Bhutanese refugees.
Former Home Minister Bal Krishna Khand, former Energy Minister Tope Bahadur Rayamajhi and former Home Secretary Tek Narayan Pandey, the most senior bureaucrat in the ministry, were among 16 people detained this month and charged.
Police are searching for 14 others who were charged in absentia.
Lakshman Upadhyay Ghimire, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, said the accused are charged with “cheating, organised crime, document forgery and state offence”.
The case was registered at the Kathmandu District Court after police investigated allegations that they had collected large amount of money from hundreds of Nepali nationals promising to send them to the United States as Bhutanese refugees.
“If found guilty, they could be jailed for up to more than 15 years,” Ghimire told Reuters news agency.
The Kathmandu Post reported that those involved have allegedly “swindled around 875 Nepali nationals of millions of rupees”.
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According to the Post, Rayamajhi has been suspended as a secretary of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) party.
Source: Aljazeera.com
