By Our Reporter
After the Malaysian company, Axiata, announced that it had sold 80 percent of its stake in Ncell to Satish Lal Acharya’s company Spectrolite UK, a new company, at a quite low price, the government, as well as the politicians of all parties, have drawn criticism from the public for their involvement in yet another corruption scandal.
The shares were sold at a low price, allegedly to evade taxes, without informing the regulatory authorities of Nepal, but with a green signal from powerful politicians.
Ganga Dahal, daughter of Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, has been blamed for facilitating the sale of Ncell shares. Axiata sold its 80 per cent stake in Ncell at only Rs. 6.5 billion, while it had purchased the same for Rs. 143 billion (US $ 1.365 billion) in 2016. This unusually low sale price has made many suspect the involvement of powerful politicians.
Earlier in 2016, Prime Minister Dahal and former Finance Minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara were dragged into controversy when Axiata acquired shares from Telia Sonera in 2016 evading a tax of RS. 66 billion. Then Mahara was accused of helping in tax avoidance.
This time, it was independent lawmaker Dr. Amaresh Kumar Singh who had been arguing that the Ncell shares were sold at a low rate to evade taxes and Ganga Dahal facilitated that taking a big amount of money. When Singh’s video went viral, it caused a big headache to the government as well as the leaders of the ruling parties, because all of them had been involved in corruption in one way or another and they were accused of failing to collect revenue from Ncell in the past.
Singh also put forth his views in a meeting of the State Management and Good Governance Committee of the House of Representatives arguing that Dahal had been involved in the scam.
When Singh, who is believed to be close to the Indian establishment, continued dragging Dahal in the case, the Prime Minister’s secretariat this week stated that what Singh said was baseless and he was making the argument as a bargaining chip.
But the public is believing Singh, not the PM’s secretariat because of the corrupt nature of the Maoist leaders, who have been living a luxurious life without running any business.
Earlier, when Ganga was accused of being involved in the scam, the Prime Minister had instructed to study the case and called a meeting of the ruling parties to discuss the issue.
When Singh continued arguing that PM Dahal and his daughter Ganga’s direct involvement, the government and the PM were under scrutiny and the government formed a probe committee just to defuse the scandal.
The case of Ncell was revealed when the government was making tall talks about good governance. Moreover, when the PM’s daughter is blamed for the scam, the PM and other leaders of the ruling parties have been in a difficult situation, and are likely to apply every measure to cover up the scandal. As Ncell had already earned a bad name in evading taxes, it could spend money on leaders and media and make them speak in its favour. A big daily, which is said to have been unable to pay its employees, has already started writing news in the favour of Ncell. As such, the case could be dismissed as Nepali people did not remember an incident for a long time.
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