DRI files case against five VoIP racketeers

KATHMANDU, FEB 03 -
The Department of Revenue Investigation (DRI) on Thursday filed a case against five individuals involved in the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) scam.
The accused are Global Internet Services Managing Director Bhola Kishor Dangol, Chairman Tarakman Singh and their accomplices Prakash Kumar Pawan, Bhaskar Sharma Poudel and Madan Nepal.
In the case filed in the Lalitpur District Court, the department has sought a penalty of Rs 2.59 billion against them. The penalty amount includes Rs 865 million loss caused to the government and a fine double the amount (Rs 1.73 billion), as per the Revenue Leakage Investigation and Penalty Act.
The case was filed as per the Act’s clause 23 (1B) that states that if a crime is confirmed on the basis of documents instead of goods, the accused should face a penalty worth the loss caused to the government in addition to a fine double the amount or a jail term for a maximum period of 3 years or both.
DRI Director General Shanta Bahadur Shrestha said they filed the case as per the decision of the Lalitpur District Attorney Office.
Filing the case in the court, DRI presented Singh, a close associate of Dangol, who is under its control. The Police have also arrested Pawan. However, the main accused Dangol is still at large.
According to DRI, Pawan, Poudel and Nepal had assisted Dangol in running the VoIP racket from Kupandol, Manbhan and Nakkhu in Lalitpur, respectively. Nepal also ran the racket from Chuchchepati, Lalitpur.
As a result of the illegal bypass of international calls, licensed telecom operators suffered a huge loss, eventually hurting the government’s revenue. According to the police, four operators—NT, Ncell, UTL and Smart Telecom—faced combined monthly losses of Rs 600 million as of September 2010 due to the illegal call bypass. But after the police crackdown, the figure came down to Rs 150 million as of January 2011.
Now, telecom operators say illegal VoIP is no more a big problem. Ncell CEO Pasi Koistinen said 90 percent of their incoming international calls come through legal channel. “Our revenue from international incoming calls has also soared,” he said.
According to Nepal Telecommunications Authority, Ncell’s income from international gateway more than doubled to Rs 5.13 billion in the last fiscal year 2010-11.
Nepal Telecom said the rate of its incoming international calls through legal channel has more than doubled. “At present, only 5-10 percent of the calls come illegally,” said an NT official.
Police started crackdown on illegal VoIP operators in 2007. Deputy Inspector General of Police Upendra Kant Aryal, chief of the Nepal Police’s Central Investigation Bureau, said they have arrested more than 60 people involved in the VoIP scam racket.
Cases have been filed against them in various district courts seeing a penalty of more than Rs 4 billion, he said, adding that the arrestees include Nepali, Chinese and Bangladeshi nationals. The police have seized more than 12,000 SIM cards and several laptops, routers, batteries and invertors from them.
Source: Kantipur