LOAD-SHEDDING RELAXED FURTHER

LOAD-SHEDDNG EASED FURTHER

Kathmandu, 9 May: Load-shedding has been eased further by Nepal Electricity Authority.
Power outage was reduced to 11 from 14 hours a day last week with the break of pre-monsoon showers that raised the level of water in rivers.
Weekly load-shedding will be reduced to 73.5 hours from 8-hours—10 hours for three days, 11.5 hours another three days and nine hours one day.
The Valley recorded 73.5 mm rainfall in the first week of May while normal rainfall in the month is 116 mm.
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MEDIA GOOGLE

“I am shocked to see our chairperson Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who was never tired of describing the Madhav Kumar Nepal-led government as a losers’ government, flexing his muscle to reward a defeated candidate with a ministerial berth.”

(Maoist Secretary CP Gajurel, The Himalayan Times, 9 May)
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NRB TO SEIZE FORMER NSM CHAIRMAN’S PASSPORT


Kathmandu, 9 May: Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) has decided to seize the passport of Yogendra Prasad Shrestha, former executive chairman of Nepal Share Market and Finance (NSM), and take action against him. A board meeting of the central bank on Sunday took the decision saying that Shrestha misappropriated more than Rs 2 billion, The Kathmandu Post reports.

As per the law, Shrestha may face a three to five years prison sentence. “It has been decided that action will be taken against Shrestha as per the law, and Nepal Rastra Bank Act, Bank and Financial Institutions Act and Banking Offence and Punishment Act are focussing on it,” said an NRB board member. “Initial probe shows huge irregularities in the company,” said a senior NRB official.

According to the central bank, investigation is still underway and the Nepal Rastra Bank Act, Bank and Financial Institutions Act and Banking Offence will be invoked in this case. These acts have provisions ranging from stopping dividend distribution to sending the institution into liquidation.

The central bank on Thursday had frozen Shrestha’s bank accounts and lockers for his refusal to produce documents sought by the NRB’s supervision team. The banking regulator has also frozen bank accounts of Gita Shrestha and Saurav Shrestha, relatives of Shrestha.

The NRB’s initial investigation found that Shrestha took loans from his own company in the name of fake loanees. Shrestha also misappropriated Rs 200 million of Rastriya Beema Sansthan (RBS). According to NRB officials, the deposit of RBS has not been included in the corporate deposit details that NSM has to send to the central bank.

The Nepal Share Market and Finance (NSM) episode has established what was feared in the domestic financial market. Bad corporate governance is spread in the banking fraternity and it is high time that the regulator took a hard decision.

A series of corporate governance mishaps have hit the domestic financial market hard, with NSM the latest casualty. The NSM episode shows how vulnerable corporate governance is in development banks and financial institutions. “The situation is much worse that what we had thought,” said a senior NRB official.

This fiscal year alone, the central bank has taken action against nine financial institutions (FIs) including five finance companies. In similar cases, the central bank penalised promoters, stopped FIs from collecting deposits, lending and distributing dividends.

In all cases, promoters were found to have manipulated banking norms related to insider lending. They also did not allow the management to work professionally. Those FIs having the same person as chairman and chief executive have suffered bad corporate governance the most, as seen in Samjhana Finance, United Development Bank, Gurkha Development Bank and Nepal Share Market.

The central bank was forced to dismiss DB Bamjan, then executive chairman of Gurkha, after a series of scandals plagued the bank. Several Gurkha promoters borrowed around Rs 500 million through third parties.

NRB investigation further showed that Gurkha, violating the Bank and Financial Institution Act (BAFIA), was in the process of buying land worth millions of rupees owned by its own promoter, Krishi Premura Holding. The bank had already paid Rs 300 million of Rs 900 million, the valued price of the land located at Kamaladi, Kathmandu.

Such was the level of irregularities that the central bank on April 29 had decided to write to the authorities concerned asking them to freeze all fixed and movable assets belonging to former directors, employees and loanees of the bank responsible for financial crisis in the institution, and take action against them under the Banking Offense Act. Officials facing the central bank’s action are former executive chairman Bamjan and directors Nirmal Gurung, Dhan Prasad Rai, Dinesh Shakya, Mina Shrestha, Sanjeev Kumar Mishra, Mahesh Prasad Rijal and Ramesh Tamang.

NRB investigation found that former executive chairman Bamjan took around Rs 250 million, while former general manager Shrestha and director Dhan Prasad Rai received Rs140 million and Rs 30 million, respectively, through third parties.

On Feb. 8, NRB decided to liquidate Banepa-based Samjhana Finance after the institution failed to recover from the financial crisis within stipulated time. Major promoters’ involvement in taking loans for themselves and their kin against banking norms led the finance company towards disaster. In Samjhana’s case, directors were not only involved in insider lending, they were also hiding details of certain transactions.

The risky behaviour of the promoters of Bara-based United Development Bank (UDB) led the central bank to declare it crisis-ridden. The promoters were found taking loans against banking norms and the BAFIA. UDB Chairman Rabindra Bahadur Singh and director Radha Krishna Amatya were each fined Rs 500,000.

The central bank in February banned three FIs—Mercantile Finance (Birgunj), Multipurpose Finance (Rajbiraj) and Investa Finance (Birgunj) from collecting deposits, lending and distributing dividends to shareholders for their failure to increase their paid-up capital on a proportional basis every year.
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WEST ASIA,NOT INDIA, NEW DESTINATION OF NEPALI WOMEN
Kathmandu, 9 May: Three years ago, when Indra Bahadur Sinjali of Nawalparasi returned after a weeklong trip to Baglung, daughter Lok Maya was not home. With help from local schoolteacher Yam Gurung, Raju Chhetri had trafficked her to the Indian city of Mumbai, The Kathmandu Post reports.
Chhetri sold Lok Maya for IRs 45,000 to a Mumbai-based trafficking agency which later supplied the girl to the Middle East.
Chhetri, whom the Nawalparasi District Police Office is watching, admitted to have trafficked the girl to an Indian agency owned by one Taufik. Mahesh Bhattarai, another Nepali trafficker said to have helped Chhetri in Mumbai, is currently in the Nawalparasi jail.
On April 17, the Nawalparasi police gave the traffickers—Chettri and Gurung—month to trace the girl's whereabouts. If Gurung and Chhetri fail to find and hand over the girl to police within the given time, they will be arrested and prosecuted.
Anti-trafficking agencies in Nepal, including Esther Benjamins Memorial Trust Foundation (EBMTF) and Maiti Nepal, say this case represents the agony of hundreds of trafficked women as well as that of their families.
According to the agencies, the trend of selling Nepali women to Indian brothels has altered.
Maiti Nepal Information Officer Achyut Nepal said traffickers these days do not choose Indian brothels. They sell Nepali girls to Indian manpower agencies which in turn sell them to Arabian agents as housemaids.
“A survey conducted of girls who returned from the Middle East shows nearly all of them are subject to sexual violence,” he said. “The trend has increased. Thus, Nepali agents are not only highly paid, this also prevents their arrest as the crime is committed under the veil of foreign employment.” Executive Director of Foreign Employment Promotion Board Sthaneshwor Devkota agreed with Nepal.
“We have also come across some such cases, leading to speculation that the trafficking trend might have shifted from brothels to Middle East,” said DIG Parbati Thapa, chief of Nepal Police Women Cell. “The reason behind this is the lack of employment opportunities in Nepal. All the government can do to prevent this is increase awareness campaigns.”
Moreover, Nepali racketeers have apartments in Indian cities of Mumbai and Delhi, among others, where girls sold to Indian agencies by local agents are kept for about two weeks while the agency manages their visa and passport.
“The girls are provided with luxuries for 12 to 15 days,” said Bhaskar Karki of EBMTF, who reached Mumbai while investigating into Lok Maya's case.
“Ignorant that they have already been sold like animals, the girls are taken to movies and beauty parlours. This shift in trafficking trend is even more dangerous. It was easier to find girls sold to brothels. Now that they are being taken to a third country, it is very difficult to trace their whereabouts.”
“They had assured me that my daughter would be back in two years,” said Sinjali, Lok Maya's father. “She's not in contact.” His wife died last year hoping to see her daughter again.
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