TheRisingNepal
Purushottam Khatri
Kathmandu, Sept. 15:Nepal Police and two other bodies of the government have been given additional rights to investigate the finance-related crimes from now onwards.
Nepal Police will have the right to investigate and file cases if anybody gets arrested on financial crimes like Hundi, source unidentified money seized by police and money laundering.
The provision was mentioned in some of the Nepal Act amendment Bill passed this week by the House of Representatives and which has been sent to the National Assembly for its approval.
“With the new provision, apart from the Department of Money Laundering Investigation (DoMLI), the sole body to investigate all kinds of finance-related crimes in Nepal, Nepal Police, Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), and Department of Revenue Investigation (DRI) have got authority to investigate financial crimes from their respective side,” Deputy Inspector General Tek Prasad Rai of Nepal Police Headquarters said on Wednesday.
Earlier, the Money Laundering Investigation Department used to investigate such cases.
To do this, the government has passed the Money Laundering Prevention Act, 2008 AD amendment Bill from the parliament.
The Section 13 of the Money Laundering Prevention Act has been amended. Earlier, Section 13 of the Act stated if there was a complaint about money laundering, it was provisioned that the investigation and case registration authority should be given to the Department of Money Laundering. But now, by revising the same section, its authority is being given to other agencies including the police.
Similarly, in the Sub-section 2, for the words “by the Department” and “by the Head of the Department”, the words “by the Investigating Office” and “by the Head of the Office Complained to” have been included.
Earlier, in such cases, the police had been handing over the arrested people to the Money Laundering Department.
Similarly, the law related to Securities Board has also been amended and the authority to investigate is also going to be given to the Nepal Police.
Nepal Police has now been investigating banking crimes, co-operative frauds, and bank scams, among others. But during such investigation, the police is doing it in the direct coordination and recommendation of the Nepal Rastra Bank. On the recommendation of the Central Bank, the police will proceed only with the help of the technical team.
DIG Rai, who is also the Spokesperson of Police Headquarters, said that the government has made the law and given the responsibility to the police by trusting us. “We will now prepare skilled manpower to conduct such investigations,” he said.
“After some time we can prepare manpower and we can investigate the cases well,” DIG Rai said.
He argued that even if it could not be implemented in all districts in the first phase, it should be done so in a phase-wise manner. He claimed that in the first phase, it will be extended to the Province Police Offices and later expanded in all 77 districts.
The Bill has also defined Hundi business as an offense and proposed penalties. A system of confiscation and imprisonment for up to one year has been proposed for those found to be involved in such transactions.
Recently, the turnover of Hundi transaction has increased. Most of the money recovered by the police is seen to have been used for the Hundi purpose.
In the financial year 2078/79, 90.7 million rupees have been seized by various police units across the country. This is an increase of about Rs. 30 million compared to the previous financial year (2077/78). In fiscal year 2077/78, police had seized 70.1 million and Rs. 50.7 million in the fiscal year 2076/77.
