Money & Finance
A parliamentary special committee formed to investigate reports that unauthorised persons entered the Ministry of Finance and tweaked tax rates in the budget for the new fiscal year has questioned former Finance Minister Janardan Sharma who allegedly let that happen when he led the Ministry nearly two months ago.
The committee members questioned Sharma for three hours - during which Sharma reportedly denied accusations hurled against him. Finance Minister Sharma was dragged into the scandal after Annapurna Post daily, citing unnamed sources, broke news claiming that unauthorised persons entered the Ministry on the night of May 28 and fiddled with the tax rates, hours before Sharma presented the budget for the fiscal year 2022-2023 on May 29.
The paper reported that the intrusion was done to help "certain businessmen" benefit from lower tax rates.
Matters came to a head after claims that even the Ministry's closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera’s footage of the night of May 28 too had been purposely deleted. Now the probe committee has asked Nepal Police's forensic experts to examine the hard disk and find out if any footage had been deleted.
Finance Ministry officials including top secretaries have vehemently denied the charges.
Sharma stood down on July 6, the day when the special probe committee was formed.
As it continued inquiries and investigations, the committee members grilled Sharma for three hours on Thursday, after which Sharma told journalists that he cooperated with the inquiry: “I’ve answered all the questions, now they are in a position to tell you more.”
The probe committee members told reporters that Sharma “denied the allegations” and termed them “fabricated”.
Already the committee has questioned senior officials of the Ministry of Finance and two Annapurna Post journalists who wrote the news. The journalists reportedly told the committee that they would not reveal their news sources, and that they would reveal it through their media if anything else had to be revealed.
See NepalMinute photos captured after the three-hour-long questioning:
