Five held for banking fraud

KATHMANDU, NOV 19 -

The police on Tuesday arrested five former officials and customers of Hama Merchant and Finance on the charge of being involved in a loan fraud amounting to Rs 76 million.

Those arrested are former general manager of the finance company Rabi Bhusan Vaidya, evaluator Shovendra Raj Joshi, guarantors and user of the loan Sachin Kumar Sunuwar, and borrowers Tilak Bahadur Sunuwar and Rajesh Adhikari.

Vaidya lives in Shantinagar, Kathmandu while Joshi is from Lalitpur. The Sunuwar duo hail from Khijichandeshwori village development committee in Okhaldhunga district and Adhikari is from Inaruwa in Sunsari district.

The Appellate Court, Lalitpur has ordered them to be confined to facilitate a police investigation, the police said. They have been accused of causing losses to Hama Merchant by making a higher valuation of the collateral for extending loans at different times and misusing the company’s funds and loans, the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police in a press release. The finance company faced a risk of loan default as the money provided was spent on other sectors instead of the projects for which it was intended, several loans were issued to a number of people against the same collateral and a single group was provided large loans, said the police.

Among those arrested on Tuesday, Sachin Kumar Sunuwar was also found to have been involved in large-scale loan fraud at General Finance Company and had been in hiding, said the police. The immediate general manager of General Finance Raju Kumar Pradhan has been in jail for the last two and a half years for embezzling Rs 78.25 million of General Finance by issuing good-for-payment cheques illegally. Sunuwar was one of the defendants in the case but had been absconding. Police investigations have revealed that Pradhan issued two good-for-payment cheques for Rs 5.09 million in the name of Prem Dhowj Lama payable from Sunuwar’s account, the proprietor of Shaharin Verities Food Suppliers, although the account didn’t have adequate balance.

Pradhan had also made an attempt to receive payments amounting to Rs 4 million by using fake cheques and stamps of the finance company and stamping good for payment on the cheques in collusion with Sunuwar.