A cabinet meeting last week appointed former journalist Sharad Ojha as the chair of the Nepal Insurance Authority, the regulator of the sector. Ojha has no qualifications for the post as required by Nepal’s Insurance Act.&nbsp;
His family ties to Nepali Congress president <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/deuba-5-qh371fm4">Sher Bahadur Deuba</a> has been cited as the reason he got to bypass appointment criteria.
This is just the latest example. Bending the law to appoint <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-crony-communism-exposed">cronies</a> and special interest groups to leadership positions in regulatory bodies has <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/crony-communism">become the norm in Nepal</a>.
Ojha’s predecessor was former Home Secretary Surya Prasad Silwal, who was suspended two months before the end of his term in December after the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/ciaa-traps-small-fish-lets-big-ones-go">Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA)</a> filed a corruption case against him in the Special Court. Days after Ojha’s appointment, the court cleared Silwal of corruption charges.
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/search?q=corruption+case">Nepal’s corruption carousel</a>
Before Silwal, the Nepal Insurance Authority was led by Chiranjivi Chapagain, a relative of Chandra Dhakal of the IME Group. Chapagain is accused of granting approval to 10 insurance companies under dubious circumstances and favouring <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/business/ime-insurance">IME Life Insurance’</a>s approval.
Meanwhile, intense lobbying by interest groups with ties to both <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-government-changes-again">Prime Minister Oli</a> and PM-in-waiting Deuba allowed Santosh Narayan Shrestha’s appointment as the chair of the Securities and Exchange Board of Nepal (SEBON) in December. Shrestha promptly paid his dues to the groups that put him in office by making preparations to grant them permission to operate stock exchange.
Shrestha was preceded by hotelier Ramesh Kumar Hamal, the recommendation procedure and committee for whom were changed to ensure his appointment.
During his tenure, Hamal hastily amended a law that allowed specific companies to sell premium stocks amid ongoing debates, &nbsp;and another one allowing the operation of stock exchanges with private sector investment instead of public companies. None of this raised eyebrows.
Hamal’s predecessor Bhishma Raj Dhungana, a former Nepal Rastra Bank official, was dismissed as SEBON chair following allegations of irregularities.&nbsp;
Most of these recent individuals were appointed heads of regulatory bodies under PM Oli and Finance Minister Bishnu Paudel and probably at their behest.
The appointments at the Nepal Insurance Authority and SEBON reflect a blatant disregard for the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/federalism-rule-of-law-and-the-judiciary">rule of law</a>. Such practice is also rampant in the cooperatives and real estate sectors, where <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-risks-being-blacklisted-on-money-laundering">illegal financial dealings</a> and bad faith business is modus operandi.
Meanwhile, Energy Minister Deepak Khadka, also a hydropower entrepreneur, is set on ousting <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/from-the-nepali-press/more-than-half-of-nepal-s-electricity-imported-from-india">Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA)</a> managing director <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/latest/kulman-ghising-to-stay-on">Kulman Ghising</a>. He previously ordered the removal of Dudhkoshi Hydropower Project CEO Bimal Gurung for criticising him on <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/no-comment">social media</a>.&nbsp;
The minister has a major conflict of interest because of his involvement in private energy sector, and is pressuring parliamentary committees and regulatory bodies to amend the law to allow the sale of 50% of the shares of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/missing-pieces-of-the-hydropower-jigsaw">hydropower projects </a>during the so-called 'lock-in period', which prevents the sale of promoter shares.
Now, lobbyists have set their sights on the Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB). Maha Prasad Adhikari’s tenure ends in April, and the same groups behind the appointment of the chiefs of regulatory bodies like SEBON and Nepal Insurance Authority are going door to door of governing coalition leaders to have their candidate appointed.&nbsp;
The book Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson—co-winners of last year’s Nobel Prize for Economics with economist Simon Johnson—describes how public institutions are misused, weakened, and pushed toward failure by those with access to power.
Regulatory bodies are crucial to maintaining fair competition and ethical market practices. They exist to serve Nepal’s public. However, they are being deliberately undermined by special interest groups paying off authorities for plum positions that will enrich them and their political patrons. &nbsp;
The government ordered the Department of Money Laundering to ‘wait’ as the body sought permission to take action against Ajeya Sumargi for illicit dealing.
It was thus unsurprising that the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) placed Nepal on its grey list in February for failing to take effective and result-oriented action to prevent money laundering.
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/black-white-and-grey">Black, white and grey</a>, Ramesh Kumar
The international community has raised a red flag against malgovernance, political interference, conflicts of interest, and impunity. The world is watching, but Nepal’s politico-corporate interests are too deep in greed to care.
Ramesh Kumar

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Public-Private Collusion

Nepal Rastra Bank Governor Maha Prasad Adhikari said last month that an assessment by the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) had put Nepal at risk of being placed on the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global money-laundering watchdog.
The final decision will be made during the FATF plenary 17-21 February in Paris. The country was previously greylisted from 2009-2014.
The watchdog had advised legal, policy and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/near-debt-experience">structural reforms for Nepal</a> to implement within a year. And while some laws were amended, implementation is another story.&nbsp;
“Nepal’s FATF rating has deteriorated due to the inaction against major cases of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/nepal-s-corruption-carousel">corruption</a>, tax evasion, and abuse of financial institutions,” explains Rup Narayan Bhattarai, former Director General of the Department of Money Laundering Investigation.&nbsp;
Sticking to the tradition of blame game, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-government-changes-again">Prime Minister KP Oli</a>, has blamed the delay in legal reforms on the previous Pushpa Kamal Dahal government.
The APG— of which Nepal has been a member since 2002— is an associate member of the FATF. The organisation had already placed Nepal on the observation list for failing to amend and implement necessary laws to prevent <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-figures-in-leaked-money-laundering-report">money laundering</a> after an evaluation last year.&nbsp;
The assessment looked into Nepal's efforts to combat money laundering in two parts: the first one being technical compliance— the legal and structural reforms to prevent money laundering— and the second being the effectiveness of their implementation.
Nepal has achieved relatively satisfactory results with technical compliance— the assessment found that the country had abided by at least 21 of the 40 criteria laid out by the FATF. Since the evaluation, Nepal has amended and enacted additional laws to meet an additional 10 criteria.&nbsp;
However, the evaluation found the country’s progress in effectively implementing laws to prevent money laundering to be very weak, with Nepal only ‘moderately compliant’ with four out of the 11 standards.
Bhattarai points to the lack of transparency and commitment to preventing money laundering. “It is not enough to just make laws and regulations, they must be implemented and produce noticeable results,” he says. “But we have failed to see such results, due to which our country’s international standing has deteriorated.”
Cooperatives and real estate transactions have also long been used to conceal and legitimise ill gotten wealth. Cooperatives are reluctant to provide details of suspicious financial transactions.
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/cooperatives-leave-nepalis-high-and-dry">Cooperatives leave Nepalis high and dry</a>, Ramesh Kumar
“International authorities have taken issue with the absence of a strong legal and structural system to prevent money laundering in cooperatives and real estate,” says a government insider. “They are well aware of the absence of political will to monitor these sectors.”
In 2023, while banks and financial institutions reported details of 6,255 suspicious transactions to the Financial Intelligence Unit, cooperatives reported only two.
Following an objection by the APG last year regarding large amounts of black money circulating in cooperatives, legislators introduced a proposal to amend the Cooperatives Act to set an individual deposit limit of Rs2.5 million in cooperatives.
But the proposal was rejected after pressure from lobbyists as well as parliamentarians connected to the cooperatives sector.&nbsp;
In December, the government issued an ordinance to amend cooperative-related laws which included a provision allowing depositors to save up to Rs5 million in cooperatives depending on the scope of the institution.&nbsp;
Meanwhile, real estate agents in Nepal do not require a licence, and the government’s flexibility to accommodate <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-business-of-politics-in-nepal">wealthy businessmen</a> has meant there are no institutions to keep track of land and property dealings and investigate the suspicious financial activity.&nbsp;
“There is no monitoring to see who is buying and selling real estate at what price, and there is no legal framework to prevent money laundering in<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/kathmandu-s-unreal-real-estate-prices"> real estate</a>,” says the Nepal government official.&nbsp;
Casinos are also a breeding ground for laundering money, also lack a strong regulatory system.
Another shortcoming pointed out by the APG are delays in and ineffectiveness of investigations and prosecutions relating to money laundering. There has been international attention on scams like the Nepal Airlines Corporation Airbus 330 purchases.
In fiscal year 2022/2023, the Financial Intelligence Unit received 7,115 reports of suspicious transactions and activities and sent 505 cases for investigation. But only a few of them were ever investigated.
The Department of Money Laundering Investigation only took 12 cases to court during the first 6 months of this fiscal year and had similarly taken only a dozen cases involving a total of Rs1.74 billion last year.&nbsp;
The department was hastily set up in 2011 after the FATF warned that Nepal would be blacklisted, but so far, it hasn’t gone beyond appeasement and whitewashing.
“If money laundering cases are to be investigated, they would involve either those at the upper echelons of power or those connected to them,” a former government official who worked at the department told us, “How then would any investigation move forward?”
The Home Ministry has also been slow to prepare a list of people suspected of terrorist activities and make such a list available for monitoring even though it is an international requirement.&nbsp;
Nepal has also not worked on a new assessment report to recommend measures to prevent money laundering since the last report was prepared in 2020.
Nepal will most certainly be on that grey list later this month, and this will negatively impact the country’s reputation on the global stage as well as its foreign investment prospects.&nbsp;
In December, Nepal had received a ‘BB-’ rating from the US credit rating agency Fitch, becoming the second-highest rated country in South Asia, after India. Government officials have been suggesting that this raiting would help attract foreign investment.
As it stands, financial institutions here may bear the brunt of the grey list status. Banks may find it difficult to conduct international transactions, and transaction costs may rise, which will in turn make imports more expensive and hinder exports.&nbsp;
Nepal being on the FATF grey list also means that the government will find it more difficult to obtain financial assistance and concessional loans from donor countries and international organisations. Interest rates on loans taken by Nepal’s government and private financial institutions from abroad will also go up.
Additionally, as soon as Nepal is placed on the grey list, financial institutions will begin to closely monitor transactions made by the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/brain-drain-into-brain-gain">diaspora around the world</a>, which will affect Nepali students and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/a-long-way-to-europe">migrant workers</a> seeking to open accounts in foreign banks, as well as those <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/the-new-equaliser">sending remittances back home</a>.&nbsp;
“Any obstacles in the flow of remittance through official channels will spell a disaster for Nepal’s economy,” a government official told us.&nbsp;
Nepal government and relevant authorities must actively try to get out of the grey list as soon as possible. The FATF and APG will give Nepal a year to get off the list of countries at risk, failing which Nepal will be placed on the blacklist and be isolated from the global stage.&nbsp;
Says Bhattarai: “It is not enough to have made laws, we need results. Nepal must be committed to acting against leaders, lobbyists, and those with access and connections involved in criminal financial dealings.”

Black, white and grey

<figure><img width="2090" height="1386" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110161120/636d178d9c7e80680e0ac773jpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption></figcaption></figure>A global investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has revealed that well known political and business figures are using tax havens for money laundering. Among the names in the latest leaks is that of Nepal’s richest man, as well as other prominent businessmen in the country.The names are contained in the ‘Pandora Papers’ leaks, a sequel to the ‘<a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/new-autocrats-global-investigative-journalism-conference-South-Africa,4058">Panama Papers</a>’ that had already exposed thousands of people around the world, as well as revealed their secret email correspondence with banks and investment partners to hide their wealth.The Washington DC-based ICIJ provided to the Centre for Investigative Journalism Nepal (CIJ) documents pertaining to Nepal that involve the Chaudhary Group, Golchha Organisation and other notable Nepalis with political connections. <img width="640" height="646" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110161124/636d17909c7e80680e0ac774jpeg.jpg" alt="">The ICIJ and 600 collaborating journalists in 117 countries pored through a trove of 11.5 million leaked documents in the largest media collaboration ever to reveal the findings. The ‘data tsunami’ in the Pandora Papers reveal shady offshore dealings of people like the leaders of Ukraine and the Czech Republic, the King of Jordan, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and people from Imran Khan’s inner circle.From the leaked documents ICIJ provided CIJ, the secret correspondence and other seem to show that Nepal’s top businessmen violated the laws of the land by having investments abroad, buying and selling shares and setting up shell companies in tax havens like the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, Mauritius, Singapore and other financial centres.Nepali investigative journalists Krishna Acharya and Ramu Sapkota led a team that analysed the Pandora Papers and found that the Nepali companies had front entities registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) in the names of family members and associates through which they moved money to a series of shell companies to launder money without detection. <img width="640" height="850" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110161124/636d17949c7e80680e0ac775jpeg.jpg" alt="">Prominent among the names in the leaked papers is that of Binod Chaudhary, Nepal’s only known dollar billionaire who was ranked the 2,141st richest man in the world by Forbes in 2018. The Pandora Papers reveal that he has companies in the BVI in the names of his wife and three sons, Nirvana, Varun, and Rahul.The leaks provided to CIJ show that the Chaudhary family has registered the companies Cinnovation Incorporated, CG Hotels and Resorts Limited, Sensei Capital Partners Inc. in BVI, and CG Hospitality Holdings Global Pte Ltd in Singapore. Officials at Nepal Rastra Bank told CIJ that Chaudhary did not have permission to hold these investments abroad.  Chaudhary has argued that his foreign investments are all legitimate, but he has admitted to using loopholes in Nepal’s Income Tax Act allowing citizens living abroad for more than 183 days a year to invest around the world.Chaudhary says in his biography published in 2013: ‘I took advantage of this (loophole) and decided to stay abroad for more than 183 days a year and become a temporary citizen of my own country. Today, my two sons Rahul and Varun are doing business abroad as non-resident Nepalis.'In a response to CIJ's query, Binod Chaudhary's son Rahul said his group had not violated any Nepali or international laws, including those governing foreign investment. "CG and its group of companies are in partnership with some of the most respected, reputed and leading multinationals globally, information of which is readily available in the public domain," he added. "We do not wish to comment on allegations against our business partners."When CIJ showed Nepal’s former Finance Secretary Rameshore Khanal the leaked documents, he said Chaudhary had clearly misused the system because the law does not allow a Nepali citizen to take money out of the country as Chaudhary appears to have done. He and two of his relatives named in the leaks are Nepalis citizensThe Pandora Papers has minute details of company correspondence, share and money transfers and other transactions between Chaudhary family members and partners. Some of the names mentioned are Pakistani, Singaporean, Sri Lankan and Bangaldeshi. One of those involved in Cinnovation in Chaudhary’s company registered in BVI is US national of Bangladeshi descent, Abdul Awal Mintoo, who was investigated in 2018 by the Anti-corruption Commission in Dhaka over money laundering and loan extortion allegations.In releasing the Pandora Papers leaks, ICIJ says that there is a vast underworld of global money transfers that work through layers and layers of offshore shell companies that are difficult to trace.“There is a shadow economy, a shadow world out there that we are not aware of that is enriching people who are already rich. Shell companies are essentially the getaway vehicles for crime in the offshore world,” ICIJ director Gerard Ryle told Australia’s ABC tv in an interview ahead of the release of the Pandora Papers. He added: “The offshore world exacerbates poverty. It leads to inequality.” Although some of the businessmen named in the papers have been nominated to Nepal's Parliament by parties, there has not been any direct involvement of politicians in money laundering through offshore companies. <img width="640" height="916" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110161124/636d17969c7e80680e0ac776jpeg.jpg" alt="">But the Centre for Investigative Journalism Nepal says politicians seem to be colluding with their business partners because there has been no investigation after <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/nepalis-in-tax-havens-swiss-banks-money-laundering/">its 2019 NepalLeaks</a> revelation of the <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/new-autocrats-global-investigative-journalism-conference-South-Africa,4058">Panama Papers</a> that brought out names of dozens of Nepalis with unlawful offshore companies.  ‘The silence of the regulatory bodies appears to be encouraging the Nepalis’ investment in tax haven countries. Pandora Papers is an outcome of that surprising silence,’ CIJ says. The other prominent Nepali business house implicated in the Pandora Papers is the Golchha Organisation. Leaked documents show it also has offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) under the names of its patriarch Lokmanya Golchha, his brothers late Diwakar Golchha, late Mahendra Kumar Golchha, cousin Chandra Kumar Golchha and Diwakar’s son Hitesh Golchha. Leaked documents examined by CIJ show that a Geneva-based law firm named Overseas Management opened an account at Barclays Bank in Switzerland in 2008 on behalf of Flatwood Limited operated by Golchha family members. The paper trail also shows that  Diwakar Golchha bought shares of Eastern Sugar Mills Limited in Nepal in 2008 through Flatwood Limited. Golchha Organisation is one of the pioneer industrial houses in Nepal and its founders established the Biratnagar Jute Mill nearly 70 years ago. In fact, the 2019 NepalLeaks mentioned that Golchha Organisation was the first Nepali company to bring in foreign investment from the British Virgin Islands through Flatwood to operate companies in Nepal.  Earlier CIJ investigations in 2017 showed that in a questionable deal, Golchha’s Eastern Sugar Mills was allowed by the Tax Settlement Commission to get away with paying only Rs400,000 when it owed the treasury Rs52 million in back taxes. Two members of the Commission and the director of the Inland Revenue Department are still facing corruption charges in the Special Court for granting allegedly illegal tax breaks to the Golchhas.  Political links Like Binod Chaudhary, Diwakar Golchha was also nominated by the Nepali Congress to the Constituent Assembly-Parliament in 2008, showing the political links of many of the businessmen named in the ICIJ documents.  The other person with close links to Maoist Centre leaders is Ajeya Sumargi Parajuli, who was exposed in the CIJ NepalLeaks for allegedly transferring money from Nepal to tax havens the suspected ill-gotten wealth of politicians. The papers also showed that Sumargi’s Zhodar Investments in BVI transferred $48,372,222 to his companies in Nepal in 2010. Zhodar’s co-owner is Cyprus national Sotirios Pittas, a lawyer and Sumargi business partner, the leaked documents show.  According to Pandora Papers, Sumargi also invested in Worldwide Incredible Limited in the BVI in 2011, and several other companies based in the tax haven. Some of the monies from BVI have been transferred indirectly to Sumargi’s companies in Nepal, including Hetauda Lime Industry Pvt Ltd, Everest Mineral Products Pvt Ltd, Muktishree Pvt Ltd, according to the Pandora Papers.  CIJ also found leaked documents that show Sumargi’s other company, The New Digitek getting permission to hold 50% share in Nepali mobile companies, including Nepal Telecom Private Limited.  Among the Pandora Papers is also a slew of email correspondence from BVI lawyers at Trident Trust Limited who warned that action would be taken if  Sumargi did not provide mandatory details for Zhodar Investments.  While poring through the Pandora Papers, CIJ’s investigative journalists Krishna Acharya and Ramu Sapkota found that Sumargi’s business partner in Nepal, Arjun Prasad Sharma, also registered a company in BVI in 2019.  In a convoluted money trail that involved several other shell companies, Sharma and Sumargi are seen to have worked in 2019 with the same Cypriot investment company, Sotioris Pittas &amp; Co LLC.  Other names The other prominent people named in the Pandora Papers leaks is Radhe Shyam Saraf and his family, who own the Taragaon Regency Hotel and Yak &amp; Yeti Hotel in Kathmandu. The documents that CIJ reviewed appear to show that the family has channelled money through companies in the British Virgin Islands to invest in Nepal.  CIJ also found documents in the leaked papers showing that the Saraf family are involved in companies in Belize, Lichtenstein and Mauritius and there appear to be questions regarding their investment in Hyatt International. Saraf had already been embroiled in controversy in Nepal over the Taragaon property and has been investigated by the Office of the Auditor General, the anti-corruption agency and the Ministry of Tourism. The other Nepali businessmen mentioned in the Pandora Papers who have invested in suspected shell companies offshore tax havens include Rajendra Shakya, Purushottam Poudyal, Sudhir Mittal, and others.  Detailed report on the Pandora Papers in Nepali and English of the Centre for Investigative Journalism Nepal (CIJ): <a href="https://cijnepal.org.np/">https://cijnepal.org.np</a>

Nepal’s richest man in the Pandora Papers

<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108131144/636a4fd29c7e80680e04fd2bjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2922" height="1834"/>Nepal will be evaluated for international money laundering activities by the APG (Asia Pacific Group) of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) during 2019, and may be blacklisted if the government does not adequately crack down on illegal cross-border money transfers.If Nepal is not able to come up with a workable mechanism to identify criminal activities and bring offenders, including prominent businesspersons and politicians, under the purview of the law by the end of 2020 it faces the danger of being blacklisted by the task force.The FATF was established in 1999 to track down and stop money laundering and funding of terrorist activities around the world. Nepal is a member of its associate organisation APG, which investigates regional member countries. With an investigation due, Nepal had hastily passed the Money Laundering Prevention Act in 2008, but took 2 years to implement it.An APG working committee evaluated Nepal, and concluded that its attempts to control money laundering were not effective enough. On February 2010, it put Nepal on an international monitoring list. Nepal then established a Money Laundering Investigation Department. With the help of the IMF and World Bank, the government created legal structures and adopted policies to prevent money laundering. After it took these steps, it was removed from the international monitoring list, which meant that it was not prohibited from doing financial transactions with other countries or international organisations.Though Nepal improved its legal stance on money laundering after the first international investigation, it does not seem to have made much progress since then in actually preventing tax evasion and money laundering.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/so-youd-like-to-do-business-in-nepal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">So you’d like to do business in Nepal?</a>, Ritu Pradhan MallaIn the past, the APG had evaluated Nepal on the basis of its legal safeguards and policies. However, in future it will be looking for concrete action to see if Nepal implemented the 40 suggestions and 11 results that it made in 2010. “The next evaluation will be focused less on laws and more on implementation and results,” admits Binod Lamichhane, spokesperson of the Money Laundering Investigation Department. “So if our implementation remains as weak as it is, it could create problems for us.”Experts say the government will find it very difficult to implement its own laws because so many of those involved are powerful businessmen enjoying political protection. “If the Money Laundering Prevention Act is implemented, then politicians and officials will have a hard time showing the source of their earnings. Which is why implementaction of the Act never became a priority for Nepal. Clearly, it was created only as a showpiece to assuage foreigners,” a former director general of the department confided.Indeed, although everyone agrees that corruption and tax evasion are rampant in Nepal, there is no record of prominent persons being investigated for it. However, since the APG will be investigating on its own next year, the department has been forced to conduct its own secret probes. Director General Rup Narayan Bhattarai says he cannot speak about the investigations at the moment but according to sources, well known Nepalis, including a businessman who is expanding outside Nepal, another tycoon who created an international business network after the 2006 movement, a prominent trader accused of gold smuggling and an industrialist who suddenly switched to tourism, are under investigation.However, the going is not expected to be easy, because the Money Laundering Investigation Department lacks coordination with other powerful agencies, which is international practice and considered essential to investigate money laundering. Though the law states that Nepal Rastra Bank should coordinate with other agencies and provide information to the department about suspicious financial transactions, the implementation of this law is weak.“Since our mechanism for identifying illegal wealth is weak, we are not able to figure out if the money, property, shares, gold, etc, deposited in banks are legal or not,” says an official of the bank. “So at the moment we are unable to effectively pass on useful information.”Currently, FATF has blacklisted Iran and North Korea, while 12 countries, including Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Cambodia, Ethiopia, and Syria, are currently on its international monitoring list. Nepal risks joining these countries if the APG evaluation does not meet international criteria for transparency.

Nepal risks being blacklisted on money laundering

<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108101132/636a22c09c7e80680e0417a6jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="542"/>In February 2015 The International Consortium of Investigative journalists (<a href="https://www.icij.org/">ICIJ</a>) revealed that Nepalis held Rs5 billion in secret Swiss bank accounts. Most people thought the money must have been parked there by Nepal’s corrupt politicians.But after the Centre for Investigative Journalism Nepal (<a href="http://cijnepal.org.np/category/english-posts/">CIJ Nepal</a>) went through 3,000 pages of documents from <a href="https://www.icij.org/investigations/swiss-leaks/">Swiss Leaks</a>, <a href="https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/">Offshore Leaks</a>, the <a href="https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/">Panama</a> and <a href="https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/">Paradise Papers</a>, the names were of Nepal’s top business people. Even foreigners had deposited money in the banks using Nepali addresses and documents.Savings of Nepalis in the banks have now crossed Rs50 billion, email correspondence between CIJ Nepal and Swiss banks show.The records also reveal that Nepalis started to deposit money in Swiss banks the year after the Maoist insurgency began in Nepal in 1996.Nepalis had Rs1.25 billion in the Swiss National Bank in 1996, but that figure doubled to Rs4.1 billion by 2006, when the war ended. Nepalis deposits in the two years after the conflict declined to Rs3.9 billion. Records show that Nepali have withdrawn Rs 15.6 billion from Swiss banks so far.The biggest Nepali depositers in a Swiss bank are Minu Shah Chhibber, and her two sons who live in the UK. They had Rs2.6 billion in Swiss banks in 2006-7. Even some foreigners are found to have used Nepali documents to deposit their money in Swiss banks, including an Israeli national using a Nepali passport to open an account with ‘Kathmandu’ as his address. Other account holders who have Nepal connections are Indians.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108101132/636a22c39c7e80680e0417a7jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1250" height="813">Despite it banking secrecy laws, an agreement between the Swiss government and the European Union in 2015 after the Swiss Leaks ends the exclusive confidentiality, and the Swiss agree to provide account details if demanded. The ICIJ says Swiss banks have profited from dictators, corrupt politicians, business persons who evade taxes and organisations that make money through the illegal transaction of weapons and drugs by allowing them to deposit their earnings.The country with the biggest Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Nepal is not China, India or the United States as one may presume, but the tax haven state of the British Virgin Islands. Of the total Rs137.67 billion received as FDI in the last two decades, the share of the British Virgin Islands (BVI) accounts for 45%. They obtained approval from the Nepal government to invest in and establish industries worth Rs8 billion.In 2017, the Panama Papers revealed that seven Nepalis including Upendra Mahato, the founder of Non-resident Nepalis Association, had invested in tax haven states. The ICIJ and CIJ Nepal collaborated in digging more into these investments, and found that Nepali businesses have used tax havens to evade taxes in Nepal or to transfer the illegally earned money to launder it. The money was then repatriated to Nepal under foreign direct investment (FDI).Investigations show that Birendra Mahato, a former lawmaker and central committee member of Federal Socialist Forum party, his elder brother Upendra Mahato, Niraj Govinda Shrestha, a non-resident Nepali and Ajeya Raj Sumargi, a businessman, are involved in this elaborate money laundering scheme. They used the sale of the telecom company Ncell to avoid paying capital gains tax in Nepal.After a G-7 Summit established the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) to combat money laundering and terrorist financing the Paris-based organisation has been blacklisting countries. The FATF blacklists countries not cooperating in anti-money laundering financing. Nepal committed to abide by the criteria drawn up by the FATF and its Asia-Pacific Group in 2012 and passed the Money Laundering-related Act.  However, given these revelations, there is still a possibility that Nepal could be blacklisted in future.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108101132/636a22c69c7e80680e0417a8jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1250" height="797">“While Nepal avoided the scrutiny and monitoring criteria of the global community in 2014 due to legislation and institutional reforms, there has not been effective implementation of the laws,” states Finance Minister Yuba Raj Khatiwada’s white paper on the economy last March.Nepali companies have also dealt with Mossack Fonseca, the intermediary law firm in BVI that helps businesses to want to launder their money by finding them legal loopholes in tax haven countries. In 2015, the ICIJ published details of the firm in the Panama Papers, after which it closed down.Panama Papers emails show that in 2008 Nepal’s Milap Group approached Mossack Fonseca to bid for a tender from the Nepal Supreme Court calling for an international consultant for Judicial Mapping and Judicial Assessment for a project on legal and judicial reforms. Milap Group emailed to Mossack Fonseca proposing to jointly apply for the tender, which a Mossack Fonseca official declined, saying the two could collaborate in future. Milap Group has been involved with foreign companies printing excise stickers for Inland Revenue Department, bank notes for Nepal Rastra Bank and passport printing and supply of Ministry of Foreign Affairs.Another company linked to Mossack Fonseca is Nepal Ventures registered in BVI. It is not clear from the Panama Papers who was listed as the owner, but a company with a similar name is registered at the Office of Company Registrar in Nepal with Dhanusha lawmaker Juli Kumari Mahato as main investor. The company has 20 percent share capital investment in United Telecom Limited. Mahato is the wife of Raghubir Mahaseth, Minister of Physical Infrastructure and Transport and sister of Upendra Mahato and Birendra Mahato. When asked, Juli Kumari Mahato denied having investments abroad, and said “it is a mere coincidence” that a company with similar name existed in the British Virgin Islands.The ICIJ and CIJ-Nepal investigations have also shown how money is laundered from tax havens into Nepal as Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Records show that the Saurabh Group chaired by Bishnu Prasad Neupane, brought foreign investment from the BVI to build a hotel in Bhaktapur, but construction was stopped after Madhyapur Thimi Municipality found the 17-storey building only had permission for a five-floor structure.Saurabh Group brought the investment for the hotel from the BVI-based Global Technology and Trademark Company, and the Rs1.94 billion proposal was approved by the Department of Industry in 2013.Sulav Agrawal is the director of four companies under the Saurabh Group and brought Rs300 million in FDI from a UAE-based company to manufacture soap and betel nuts in Birganj. Agrawal is also vice-chairman of Shankar Group, but the UAE company has the same name as the one based in the BVI: Global Technology and Trademark which was also found to be evading taxes in its ventures in Parsa district.Krishna Holdings Ltd of Hong Kong has a 45% stake in Sarbottam Cement Pvt Ltd of Nawalparasi, also run by the Saurabh Group. The remaining 55% shares are owned by Neupane and his relatives. Just like how Global Technology and Trademark is operating out of not just the UAE but also the BVI, the Hong Kong-based Krishna Holdings is related to the UAE-based Krishna International.Krishna International Ltd has mentioned on its website that it has invested in as many as 22 countries including Nepal, Mauritius and Cyprus. Ramesh Kumar Sawarthia has brought Rs29.5 million from Hong Kong to build a commercial complex in Gyaneswor, Kathmandu in 2005.The British Virgin Islands-based Global Technology and Trademark has also invested Rs 240 million in the printing and lamination sector. This company has no Nepali partner, but Saurabh Group’s Jagadamba Synthetic and Quality Roto Packaging is also in the printing and lamination business.Four companies in which Saurabh Group’s Neupane has invested, have benefitted from Nepal’s controversial tax settlement policy which allowed them to get away with paying just 3.45% of the total taxes due to the state after a Commission formed by Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat in 2015 waived payments.The CIJ Nepal Nepal investigation based on the Paradise Papers leaks obtained by the German paper Süddeutsche Zeitungin 2017 also unearthed links between Nepal’s Laxmi Cement and tax havens in the BVI, the Isle of Man, Seychelles as well as two Indian investors. Shareholders of Laxmi Cement are also involved in KEPY Cement Udyog of Dhading and Ghorahi Cement of Dang.The Act Restricting Investment Abroad, 1964 bars Nepalis from investing in a foreign country, but the ICIJ and CIJ-Nepal investigation found that 55 Nepalis have invested in foreign countries which includes well-known captains of industry in Nepal and non-resident Nepalis. Although the law does not bar NRNs from investing abroad, but there are questions about their offshore companies.Former lawmaker Birendra Mahato, who is currently a central member of the Sanghiya Samajbadi Forum-Nepal, has invested in the ‘OJSC Amkodor Holding Limited Company’ in Belarus with his brother Upendra and another overseas Nepali Niraj Govinda Shrestha, and a foreign partner Romeo Abdo, who also happens to be linked to the Ncell tax-evasion case. Abdo, who is of Lebanese origin has been doing business in Belarus, represented the TeliaSonera in Ncell in whose ownership transfer of nearly Rs61 billion (the amount has reached Rs 72 billion now) was implicated in evading Nepal’s capital gains tax. Birendra Mahato admitted having the investment seven years ago, but not anymore, and denied knowing Abdo.For full five-part investigation go to <a href="http://cijnepal.org.np/category/english-posts/">CIJ Nepal</a>

Nepalis in tax havens, Swiss banks, money laundering

Recent outrage in Sikkim over an Indian Army expedition climbing <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/saving-kangchenjunga">Kangchenjunga</a>, the world’s third-highest peak, has spiked attention to the need to balance mountaineering jobs with indigenous reverence for sacred landmarks. Kangchenjunga (8,586m) is not a peak as much as it is a mountain range with 16 peaks above 7,000m on the border between India and Nepal -- the word itself means ‘five treasures of the snows’ in Tibetan. Some of the highest prominences like Kangchenjunga West and Kangbachen are in Nepal, while the Main, Central and South Peaks are on the border. Climbing the peak from the Indian side has been banned since 2001 because the indigenous Lepcha community there regard the mountain as the abode of Dzoe-nga, the patron deity of Sikkim, which was an independent Himalayan Kingdom until it was annexed by India in 1975.&nbsp; Buddhists in Sikkim say their saint, Padmasambhava, recognised the mountain as a protective spirit. The state has declared the base of the mountain Kangchenjunga National Park, which covers an area one-third of Sikkim. ‘The act of scaling this sacred peak is not only a matter of serious concern but also a violation of both the prevailing legal provisions and the deeply held religious beliefs of the people of Sikkim,’ read a letter from Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang (Golay) to Amit Shah, India’s Minister of Home Affairs and Cooperation.&nbsp; Tamang continued: ‘We further request Your Honour to take up the issue with the Government of Nepal to ensure that no future expeditions are permitted on the sacred mountain, in deference to the deeply held beliefs and cultural values of the people of Sikkim.’ Kangchenjunga was climbed for the first time exactly 70 years ago by a British team who told King Tashi Namgyal, the Choegyal of Sikkim, that they would not set foot on the summit. Since then, there have been about 532 successful climbs of the peaks and 52 have died while trying.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250628060616_5c268e08cf49f36b79ef9b31933fc2d9bf9a6f65414e7ca06dd028bf04e7ccc1.png" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20250628060616_5c268e08cf49f36b79ef9b31933fc2d9bf9a6f65414e7ca06dd028bf04e7ccc1" data-rendition-name="original" width="1782" height="1178" loading="lazy" alt="Kangchenjunga: too sacred to climb NT"> <figcaption>Indigenous communities in Sikkim held purification ceremonies following the Indian expedition to Kangchenjunga. Photo: THE VOICE OF SIKKIM / FACEBOOK</figcaption> </figure>  <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/peak-climbing-season-2025-s4abrxny">This spring climbing season</a> alone, there were 70 climbing permits for foreigners issued for Kangchenjunga by the Nepal government, and made it to the top while one French climber died.&nbsp; One of the expeditions this year was an Indian Army team led by Col Ranveer Jamwal, who has summited the highest peaks on all seven continents, and Mt Everest thrice. Jamwal’s team was on the final leg of a ‘<a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/nimas-summits-mt-kangchenjunga-concludes-historic-har-shikhar-tiranga-mission-successfully/articleshow/121341315.cms?from=mdr">Har Shikhar Tiranga</a>’ (The Tricolour on Every Peak) mission to plant the Indian flag at the highest points of each of India’s 28 states. Kanchenjunga was the last peak they had left, and the hardest, but the expedition put five climbers on the summit. What seems to have incensed the Sikkimese is that while it has banned climbing the mountain from its side, it was an Indian military expedition that went to Nepal to climb the mountain. After news broke of the climb in May, the Sikkim Indigenous Lepcha Tribal Association asked people to observe purification ceremonies in temples across the state. Mayalmit Lepcha of the association acknowledged that the Sikkim government was also partly at fault: “I don’t think such an expedition could have gone forward without the state government being informed, so it could have done something to intervene. It shows weakness. What’s done is done, all we can do is carry out these sanctification ceremonies.”&nbsp; In 2000, one year before Sikkim’s ban, the state allowed an Austrian team to attempt Kanchenjunga’s northeast face for a fee of $20,000, on agreement that they would stop 10m before the summit. Despite this, there was outrage over the expedition on the grounds that it violated Indian laws regarding the defiling of religious sites and Sikkim’s rights to maintain its culture after merging with India. The Indian Army expedition was also seen to have circumvented Sikkim’s law and violated religious sensibilities by going through Nepal. While the team may have thought they were respecting Sikkim’s beliefs by finding a way to complete the mission, the people of Sikkim saw it as defilement.&nbsp; The somber mood of the Sikkim people at the ritual contrasts sharply with Jamwal’s sense of accomplishment. “Without a doubt, the most difficult summit of my life,” he told reporters after the climb. “It tested every ounce of our will.”&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250628060616_ccfe079c78dab788d19fe2080ee8a5d5dcb11de4157316f6d94e5964da097157.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20250628060616_ccfe079c78dab788d19fe2080ee8a5d5dcb11de4157316f6d94e5964da097157" data-rendition-name="original" width="787" height="377" loading="lazy" alt="Kangchenjunga: too sacred to climb NT"> <figcaption>Prayer flags along the Sikkim-Kangchenjunga trekking route. Photo: TREKKINGININDIA.COM</figcaption> </figure>  The <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-rise-and-fall-of-nims-purja">controversial Nepali-British mountaineer Nirmal Purja</a> was also on Kangchenjunga this spring the mountain, on a mission to summit all 14 8,000m peaks for a third time. He echoed Jamwal about the tough conditions: “The conditions above camp were extremely tough, with deep snow and challenging terrain—more crevasses than usual.” Nepal’s government has not said anything publicly, but it is unlikely that it will ban climbing on Kangchenjunga, since it is becoming popular with expeditions because of its technical challenges, and overcrowding on Mt Everest. Nepal does have bans in place for some of its mountains out of respect for local beliefs. <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/to-open-machapuchre-for-mountaineering-or-not">Mt Machapuchre</a> (6,990m) the imposing pyramid that looms over Pokhara, for example, is seen as an icon of purity by the Gurung people and a symbol of Vishnu by the Hindu communities who live at its base. A strict climbing ban has been in place since 1957, when a British expedition led by Col Jimmy Roberts stopped 45m short of the summit – either because the last bit was too difficult or out of deference to local sentiments.&nbsp; Khumbila that stands above Namche Bazar is only 5,761m high, but like Kanchenjunga is considered the protector deity of the Sherpa people. Gauri Shankar on the Nepal-China border, called Chomo Tseringma by the local community, was off-limits between 1965 and 1979 due to its association with Lord Shiva and Gauri, his consort. Although expeditions are now allowed, there are not too many takers. In Tibet, climbing Mount Kailash is prohibited by the Chinese government because it revered by the Hindus, Buddhists and followers of the Bon faith. Even Mt Everest is regarded as sacred, and its Sherpa name is Chomolungma, Goddess Mother of the Earth.&nbsp; Economically, climbs on Kanchenjunga bring in decent revenue. This climbing season, the 41 permits, at $1,800 each, brought in $73,800. This is somewhat comparable to Makalu, Lhotse, and Annapurna I, but these numbers are dwarfed by the $4 million in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-everest-industry">Everest permits</a>. Revenue from Kanchenjunga climbing permits is something Nepal could potentially forgo if necessary, but the expeditions also provide jobs to hundreds of high altitude guides, porters, base camp support staff and other logistical costs.&nbsp; As the third highest mountain in the world and the tallest in India, there will always be significant motivation to climb it from the Nepal side, especially as climbers are drawn by the technical climbing at high altitude.

Kangchenjunga: too sacred to climb?

The monsoon this year arrived on time, and brought life-giving rain — irrigating paddy terraces, recharging groundwater, reviving springs, and increasing electricity generation.
But Nepal has to deal with either too much water or too little. On a clear April day before the monsoon, the hills of Sindhuli district were parched, and there were wildfires burning out of control. There had been no rain for the past six months.
And that has been the perennial crisis for Nepal’s farmers: that 85% of the rainfall occurs during just four months of the monsoon with little rain for the other eight months.&nbsp;
The water crisis is related to the powerful changes sweeping the mid-hill region of Nepal. With better roads, higher incomes and more exposure, many residents now aspire to have the kind of water supply seen in urban homes. They want hot or cold water at the turn of a tap, showers and flush tank toilets.&nbsp;
To meet this rising demand, many local and provincial governments are investing in large water supply projects often by lifting water from rivers hundreds of metres down the mountain. But these new systems may not be sustainable in the long run.
Many villages in Sindhuli are switching from local springs to piped systems, and even in rural homes, overhead tanks are becoming common.
But this new convenience comes with big challenges. Lifting water from rivers far below requires long pipes, electric pumps, and constant maintenance. These systems are costly, and the streams themselves often shrink to a trickle in the dry months. Big water-lifting schemes look impressive, but there is doubt if they can meet growing water demand.
A much more sustainable solution would be what some communities are doing: restoring old ponds or build new recharge systems. But those villages are exceptions, in most places traditional ponds and wallows are being filled up to be turned into sports fields, or make way for buildings.
Where there are new ponds, they are sometimes in the wrong places or without proper design. Roads and drains are not engineered properly and have increased landslides and erosion. Water management in hilly areas is not just about building things, it is about building in the right way, in the right place.
Traditional water systems were based on nature. They were not perfect, but they used the land wisely. Ponds used to hold rainwater and slowly refill springs which supported families, farms, and forests.&nbsp;
Not everything worked well in the past, but we can learn from traditional water management practices. Across Nepal, some rural municipalities have launched campaigns to store monsoon runoff — either in tanks, ponds or by recharging the aquifers.
But not all efforts have been successful. Some ponds are built without any hydrological study. Some are rushed to meet deadlines rather than real needs.&nbsp;
Now, the Muhan initiative hopes to revive springs to make households more resilient and help farmings. With the financial support of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, research is being done to understand how springs work and how they are affected by changes in rainfall, land use, and development.&nbsp;
Instead of just building pipes and tanks, the project maps the entire springshed so we can understand the root cause of water shortage. In Sindhuli, the problem is not the amount of rain, but the loss of natural systems that store it and the social systems that manage water.&nbsp;
Nepal’s towns and villages now face a major challenge: how to manage water all year round as demand rises with people’s living standards. Depending only on river-lift systems is not a sustainable solution.&nbsp;
We need a mix of approaches that help store water from the rainy season to make it available for the rest of the year, whether by directly harvesting rainwater, restoring ponds, managing springsheds, or smart management of demand.
Rural Nepal is also seeing dramatic depopulation. Much of the outmigration can be stemmed if there is easier water supply for agriculture and household use. Across the mid hills, villages are emptying because springs are going dry. Government policy needs to catch up with the reality on the ground, and support solutions that work for people and nature. Every water supply plan should include recharge structures. Every road or building project should consider water flow and erosion. Local governments need more than budgets: they need training, tools, and data.
Ngamindra Dahal is with the Nepal Water Conservation Foundation, Kathmandu. Hemant Ojha collaborated in this piece and is associated with the Australian National University.

Water for Life

Turkish Airlines has been presented with the Sustainable Financing Pioneer Award by Ishka, recognising its landmark transaction that, for the first time, integrated a sustainability-linked loan structure into a multi-currency JOLCO financing model for the acquisition of two next-generation, fuel-efficient Airbus A321neo aircraft. This innovative transaction, arranged by Societe Generale, links the financing terms to Turkish Airlines’ Sustainability Performance Targets (SPTs), particularly the goal of reducing carbon intensity across its fleet.
&nbsp;&nbsp;“We believe this structure not only supports our fleet renewal and growth objectives, but also reinforces our long-term commitment to becoming a carbon-neutral airline by 2050,” said Chief Financial Officer Murat Şeker.

Turkish finance

<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/the-last-of-the-kusunda">The Kusunda</a> are among the last remaining hunter-gatherer communities left in Nepal, and it has only one fluent speaker left of a language that is not related to any other language group in South Asia.&nbsp; The Kusunda call themselves the King of the Forests ((गेम्येहाक़ in Kusunda,वन राजा in Nepali) and used to have a nomadic lifestyle till recently. But decades of exclusion from mainstream society and modernity have forced the Kusunda to assimilate. &nbsp; Today, most Kusunda live across Nepal’s mid-hills and western plains, choosing to identify themselves as Thakuri and adopting names like Sen, Shahi, and Khan to avoid ostracisation. Over time, inter-ethnic marriages between the Kusunda and other communities became increasingly common.&nbsp; However, the assimilation with other communities also meant that almost no one from the Kusunda community can speak their mother tongue – considered by linguists to be a ‘language isolate’ not related to any other language group in the world, and lacking set rules of grammar that are foundational to other languages. There are no words for ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ in Kusunda, nor are there words to signify direction. There are 23 languages with less than 1,000 speakers listed in Nepal's 2021 census, with Kusunda being the language with the least number of speakers. The number of people who identified as Kusunda has decreased with each subsequent census. Only 253 individuals identified themselves as Kusunda in the last National Census of 2021, down from 273 in 2011.&nbsp; <div class="embed-block"><iframe src="https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/raithane-bhakha/embed/episodes/Kusundas---the-last-of-the-forest-kings-e23ge6p/a-a9peei1" height="102px" width="400px" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe></div> The government’s decision to provide a social security stipend to the community for the past few years has prompted many from the Kusunda community to reclaim their identity and in the process, explore their culture and language. Kamala Sen Kusunda, who lives in Dang, is the only fluent native Kusunda speaker alive, although there are now other Kusunda and non-Kusunda people learning how to speak the language. By the time Kamala Sen Kusunda was born in 1975, her family had settled in a village in Rolpa. Although she did not experience the nomadic life of her forebears, she still roamed the forests freely as a child and many of the values and socio-cultural practices of her community were instilled in her and her siblings.&nbsp; This meant that Kamala grew up speaking Kusunda with her family. But by then, the Kusunda had increasingly begun to interact with people beyond their community, and inter-ethnic marriages had become a norm.&nbsp; Kamala herself married at 18 to a 52-year-old man from the Chhetri community. She would go on to have four children, but they were brought up with her husband’s culture and community rather than her own, and teaching them her mother tongue seemed impractical.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250628030648_afaa298bf8ea3b7086e2ed086b11eab463ef2b20a82a4aad74df3dd2e922a4c3.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20250628030648_afaa298bf8ea3b7086e2ed086b11eab463ef2b20a82a4aad74df3dd2e922a4c3" data-rendition-name="original" width="855" height="641" loading="lazy" alt="Kusunda NT"> <figcaption>Gyani Maiya Kusunda with Kusunda youth in 2015.</figcaption> </figure>  “If I had spoken my language to them when they were children, they would have learned,” she tells us ruefully. “But they were growing up in a different community, so I never pushed, and they never expressed interest.” At the time, she had other things to worry about, such as earning a livelihood and sustaining her family. To find work, Kamala and her family moved to Shimla in India, where she worked at an apple orchard for six years.&nbsp; Over the next years, Kamala and her family moved back and forth between India and Nepal for work, and Kamala was not actively conversing in the language of her people or being able to connect with members of her community now scattered across Nepal.&nbsp; Had she not forgotten her language after all those years? “How could I forget the language of my ancestors?” she replies. “Not speaking it did not mean that it ceased to be a part of me.”&nbsp; Kamala had been working at a brick kiln in Thimi seven years ago when the National Language Commission tracked her down, offered her a paid position as a Kusunda language consultant and source person for basic language training in Dang.&nbsp; It was there that Kamala met her cousin Gyani Maiya Sen Kusunda, the only other person able to speak Kusunda fluently, who had been working with the Commission to conserve Kusunda language and culture. It was also where Kamala met language researcher and lexicographer Uday Raj Ale. Ale had been in the middle of his research into the Tharu language and community 15 years ago when he met Gyani Maiya Kusunda’s son, who told him that his mother was one of the few people who spoke Kusunda, but that no one had shown an interest in studying and preserving the language and culture. Ale met Gyani Maiya, spending time with her learning and researching Kusunda. By 2017, Ale had collected enough words to put together a Kusunda dictionary. The Kusunda vocabulary currently comprises 2,000 words. His research into the Kusunda language and culture has taken him to every known Kusunda household in Nepal. Although the census puts the number of Kusunda at 253, Ale reckons there are only 158.&nbsp; “Kusunda language is endangered due to its lack of use in everyday life, literature, and religious and socio-cultural practices, as well as the prevalence of inter-ethnic marriages,” explains Ale. In 2019 the Language Commission began its language transfer programs for youth from indigenous communities. Since then, the Commission has completed multiple phases of Kusunda language classes in Dang facilitated by Uday Raj Ale. The classes have 20 students, not just from the Kusunda community, but also interested non-native students.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250626120632_c6c378bc00af450f2b7f0cf17af1c3b2b6f7b7226927c458c3e01ec389869d33.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20250626120632_c6c378bc00af450f2b7f0cf17af1c3b2b6f7b7226927c458c3e01ec389869d33" data-rendition-name="original" width="1485" height="1535" loading="lazy" alt="Kusunda NT"> <figcaption>Students learning Kusunda with instructor Uday Raj Ale (second row, left)</figcaption> </figure>  Khamba Rokaya, who worked as a caretaker for young Kusunda children in Dang, became interested in learning the language as she sat in with the children during their lessons, and for the last few years has been among the few non-native Kusunda language learners in Dang. “I am not from the Kusunda community, but now that I have learned the language, I hope to do my part to carry on the work and share my knowledge with as many people as possible,” she says. “One way to ensure that we preserve this language is to extend its speaker base, both within the Kusunda and non-native communities.” Ale and Kamala have continued to work together since Gyani Maya’s passing in 2020, expanding the Kusunda vocabulary and creating appropriate curricula to fit the needs of the students as their knowledge of Kusunda expands.&nbsp; But without any documentation of Kusunda history, the community’s traditions, stories, values and language were at risk of being lost to time. “The loss of an ethnicity, language or culture in a country is akin to losing a vital organ, and a unique perspective of looking at the world,” says Ale. Which is why Archive Nepal in collaboration with the British Council’s Cultural Protection Fund and the UK’s Department of Culture, Media, and Sport in February launched a book of creative writings in the Kusunda language titled पिन्डा (meaning ‘The First’ in Kusunda): A Compilation of Kusunda Literature. The book is a collection of informative essays about the Kusunda language and culture, short stories that explore themes from nomadic life to universal Nepali experiences of poverty and migration, letters to loved ones, as well as conversational pieces by five Kusunda students ranging from ages 16 to 30. The works in the Kusunda language are also translated into Nepali and English.&nbsp; “Language is an important part of ethnic identity, and our indigenous languages cannot evolve or be conserved unless they are spoken or taught,” said Ale during the launch of the book earlier this year. “But most importantly, language exists as long as there exists literature in that language.” Kamala was in Kathmandu for the launch of the book, and smiled proudly as she looked at the young writers who had contributed to the collection. She said: “I’m glad the young people have chosen to learn and preserve Kusunda. Otherwise, our language would have died with me.” &nbsp;

money-laundering