Case against two people including Sunil Paudel, the then Executive Director of Information Technology Center
We use Google Cloud Translation Services. Google requires we provide the following disclaimer relating to use of this service:
This service may contain translations powered by Google. Google disclaims all warranties related to the translations, expressed or implied, including any warranties of accuracy, reliability, and any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and noninfringement.
The Abuse of Authority Investigation Commission has filed a corruption case against Sunil Paudel, the then executive director of the National Information Technology Center, on the charge of taking bribe from a contractor for the purchase of information technology equipment.
On Thursday, the authority filed a case in the special court against Paudel for taking a bribe during the purchase of equipment for the year 2074/75 and awarded a fine of 38 million 50 thousand 400 rupees.
Paudel is the outgoing Managing Director of Nepal Telecom. He is in jail after being convicted by a special court in a corruption case. A corruption case was filed in a special court against him and Vikal Poudel, the executive director of Surakshan Printing, after he was found to have taken illegal money to a bank in Singapore through corruption in Nepal.
Since then both have been suspended and both have been relieved of their posts . Both have been convicted in this case and are currently in jail. Vikal Paudel was appointed to that place after becoming the managing director of Paudel Telecom. In the case filed on Thursday, the authority has also made Indian citizen Deepak Anand, the representative of F-5 Cisco Company for Nepal, a defendant in the charge of murder by paying a bribe for the contract of 2074/75.
Both the defendants have been demanded to be punished with the same penalty equal to the amount of the bribe transaction. The authority has also demanded additional punishment for Poudel for committing a crime as the executive director of the center. The authority has also demanded to recover the bribe amount from the defendant. For the purchase of equipment, a contract worth 128.2 million 40 thousand rupees was made excluding VAT.
In order to prepare/make a cost estimate at a predetermined price in agreement for the purchase of equipment, the then executive director of the center Poudel and Indian citizen Anand received quotations from three companies, InstaSafe Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore (India), Exclusive Networks Asia Pvt. Ltd. Singapore and Techdata Pvt. Ltd. Singapore. Based on the same facts and evidence, the corruption case has been filed by the authority including Paudel involved in bribery/transactions as defendants.
It has also been found that in order to select the contractor company, Poudel himself approved the cost estimate by asking his subordinates to prepare technical specifications. In the same arrangement, Poudel contracted to buy equipment for the center through Austral Computers Nepal Pvt Ltd to bring equipment from F5 Cisco and Instasave Singapore.
It has been found that the issue of preparing the price list of the equipment to be purchased in the bribe dialogue and preparing the cost estimate accordingly and paying the contract amount to the contractor according to that has been settled through the bribe dialogue. For that, it seems that it has been decided in advance how much money will be transferred to which device . Based on that, it seems that the settings up to making the company selected in the agreement to enter the contract with 1 percent less than the others have already been finalized .
For that, Paudel took a bribe of 280 thousand US dollars from the contractor . According to the exchange rate at that time, the bribe will be equal to 38 million 50 thousand 400. The bribe given to the defendant Sunil Paudel in the equipment purchase contract and the Nepalese bidder Austral Computers' margin of 128,240,000 (excluding VAT) including 5.72 percent, the defendant Sunil Paudel paid to Austral Computers and after receiving the said payment, Austral kept its margin at 5.72 percent and opened the remaining LC and sent USD 10,53,604 to Universal Procurement System Pvt Ltd in Singapore. was . Out of that amount, Poudel received an amount equal to the amount that the authority established as a bribe from Singapore. During the investigation, the authority also found a conversation between Paudel and Indian citizen Anand regarding the bribe transaction. According to the indictment of the authority, Paudel had settled the bribe transaction on August 10, 2018 (July 25, 2075).
