Kathmandu, May 8: Former Finance Minister Gyanendra Bahadur Karki and 13 others have been dragged into a fresh corruption case filed by the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority over alleged financial irregularities tied to the construction of Pokhara Regional International Airport.
The anti-corruption body claims the state suffered losses amounting to Rs 3.62 billion through customs tax exemptions improperly granted for imported equipment and construction materials used in the airport project. Humanity built airports to connect the world and then immediately found ways to turn customs waivers into a side hustle. Remarkably consistent species.
The case has been registered at the Special Court of Nepal, where the CIAA alleges that officials and the Chinese contractor colluded to create an implementation agreement that unlawfully exempted the company from paying customs duties and taxes.
According to the original contract signed with the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, the Chinese construction firm was supposed to bear all applicable taxes, customs charges, and related fees within the overall project cost, in line with Nepali law. Investigators, however, say the agreement was later manipulated to relieve the contractor of those obligations.
Besides Karki, those named in the case include former tourism secretary Maheshwar Neupane, former finance secretary Shankar Prasad Adhikari, former joint secretaries Suresh Acharya and Dunduraaj Ghimire, former secretary Kewal Bhandari, former CAAN director general Sanjiv Gautam, outgoing director general Pradeep Adhikari, under-secretary Yubaraj Pandey, section officer Urmila Bhandari and engineer Yogesh Aryal.
The CIAA has demanded both legal punishment and recovery of the allegedly misappropriated funds from all defendants.
This is not the first corruption probe linked to the Pokhara airport project. In December 2025, the CIAA filed another sweeping case against 55 individuals, including five former ministers, accusing them of major financial misconduct during the airport’s construction.
In that case, the anti-graft agency sought recovery of Rs 8.36 billion and maximum jail terms against the accused, among them former ministers Ram Sharan Mahat, Post Bahadur Bogati, Ram Kumar Shrestha, Bhim Prasad Acharya and Deepak Chandra Amatya.
People’s News Monitoring Service
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