The American government has fined the ship supplier company AAR Corporation $55 million for the accusation of bribery during the sale of two widebody ships to the Nepal Air Service Corporation.

The American Ministry of Justice fined AAR Corporation 7.5 billion Nepalese rupees after it was proven that it had bribed Nepalese officials with 2.5 million US dollars during the ship procurement contract process.

AAR Corporation is an American company owned by Deepak Sharma, a British national of Nepali origin. Sharma has already been convicted by the special court of Nepal in the ship purchase case. 11 people including Sharma were found guilty by a special court on December 20 and sentenced to a fine of around one and a half billion rupees and imprisonment. 

Sharma and two former secretaries of the government, Shankar Prasad Adhikari and Shishir Kumar Dhungana, the then general manager of the Air Services Corporation, Sugaratna Kansakar, member of the board of directors and joint secretary Budhisagar Lamichhane, managing director of German Aviation Capital Ana Topa, representative Christian Neuhlen and financial director of AAR, Oleg Kalistru, appeared in the special court. , CEO of AR John Holmes, Chairman of Highfly X Paulo Miripuri and director Gerald Thornton have been found guilty. 

Concluding that there was corruption in the purchase of the ship, the Abuse of Authority Investigation Commission filed a case against the then Minister of Tourism Jeevan Bahadur Shahi, two former secretaries and 32 people including Dhungana on 22nd of Chait 2080 with a demand of Rs 1,470,10,85,482 .

Two weeks after the decision of the special court, the US government also found the supplier company guilty of bribery. The US Department of Justice issued a statement on this matter on December 19 (last Thursday). 

Widebody ship purchase case is known as a big financial scam in Nepal. This issue was investigated by the US government through the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). During the investigation by the US intelligence agency FBI, it was confirmed that the ship supplier company paid bribes. According to the statement issued by the US Ministry, AAR made a profit of 26 million dollars by doing business through illegal means. 

"AAR bribed high-level government officials in Nepal and South Africa to do business with state-owned airlines and made approximately $24 million in illegal profits," Brent Wible, chief counsel of the Department of Criminal Investigation under the Ministry of Justice, said in a statement. 

William S. Walker, Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), New York Field Office, has said that AAR violated US law by bribing government officials in Nepal and South Africa. 'Today's result is a firm commitment to maintain accountability in HSI's global business,' he said, 'HSI New York will take all necessary steps to make those involved in corrupt practices fully accountable.' A contract was awarded to buy two ships. Christian, a German citizen, played a role in the procurement of the ship in connivance with 3 other companies. The investigation confirmed that Kalistru opened Hifly X Company to buy the ship.

The president and CEO at AAR was John Holmes when the corporation was initially contracted. Later, British citizen Sharma became the chairman of the company. In order to commit corruption under the cover of buying ships, Sharma set up a company with a foreign national as its chairman and bought two big ships on February 19, 2073 and sold them to the corporation for about 24 billion rupees. 

Sharma's group managed to get the government officials to sign the ship purchase agreement against the law, terms and conditions. It has been found in the investigation that a sub-committee was formed to buy a new ship for the corporation, and a scandal was created to buy an old plane through corrupt practices.

A procurement committee was formed under the coordination of the then General Manager Kansakar to buy the ship. After that, Kansakar formed a three-member sub-committee under the chairmanship of Surya Prasad Acharya, a member of the board of directors.

On June 30, 2073, the board of directors revised the criteria and decided to buy the ship from the cabinet. The sub-committee submitted its report on 32 July 2073. In all these processes, conditions were inserted to suit the AAR. Two months later, on October 5, the Board of Directors meeting instructed the corporation management to come up with a 3-year action plan including procurement.

After that, the sub-committee formed under the coordination of Acting Director Ramhari Sharma of Kansakar gave an opinion that it would be appropriate to buy A-330-200 widebody aircraft of Air Bus. Before that, when the MoU between Airbus and the corporation was signed in November 2009, the price per aircraft was 88 million 99 thousand 317 US dollars. According to the MoU, in 2017, when adding the price increase, the price per flight was fixed at 118.1 million 63 thousand 773 dollars. But later the process was started to buy ships built after 2014. 

After revising the criteria, a meeting chaired by the then Tourism Secretary Adhikari, who was also the Chairman of the Board of Directors, on October 7, 2073, gave approval to call for public notices to buy two old wide-body ships. A notice was issued three days later on October 10. On October 23, an 11-member evaluation committee was formed under the leadership of Kamu Deputy General Manager Ramesh Bahadur Shah. When the

committee submitted its report on December 2, proposals from 11 companies were received, and since the criteria had already been agreed upon, only certain companies competed. After AAR was selected, Kansakar sent a letter to AAR's Sharma to sign the agreement for the purchase of the ship. 074 The cabinet meeting on 7th of May decided that the government will guarantee to provide 25 billion loan from the Provident Fund and Citizen Investment Fund for the purchase of ships.

Then the Ministry of Finance sent a letter of guarantee to the Savings Fund and the Investment Fund. However, in addition to questioning the procurement process, the Employee Provident Fund and the Citizen Investment Fund were reluctant to give loans after a complaint was filed with the Authority. But under the pressure and influence of Shaktikendra, the amount was paid by making a decision from the Council of Ministers.