Nepali Congress (NC) leader Krishna Prasad Sitaula, who has been implicated in Sudan scam by a parliamentary committee report, has claimed that he was not involved in the multi-billion scam and the Nepal Police officials should be held accountable for it.
This is the first time the former home minister openly passed the buck on police officers after the Sudan scam case landed at the Special Court.
Sitaula claimed his name cannot be dragged through the mire just because he “did not intervene to stop the APC purchase deal”. The file on the purchase of the APCs, Sitaula said, was never forwarded to him when he was the home minister.
“The documents themselves clearly indicate who was involved in the deal. Who accepted the supplies when the run-down vehicles were purchased? Who approved the payment despite poor quality of supplies and without checking it?” he told the Post on Thursday. “The case ends at the level of Nepal Police itself. It does not reach the political leadership level.”
He also claimed that other former home ministers Bam Dev Gautam and Bhim Rawal, both UML leaders, and former Home Secretary Umesh Mainali were innocent too.
Asked why some accused police officers blame political leadership, Sitaula said they might have said so “out of vengeance and to prove themselves innocent”.
On whether he was unaware of such a big deal as a home minister, Sitaula said he could have been aware of the contract agreement “had he been the type of leader who wants commission on the contracts that the lower level officials seal”. “It is not possible and even necessary for a home minister to know every thing in the lower offices. The issue of Police Welfare Fund is entirely out of the ambit of the home minister.”
Meanwhile, contrary to what Sitaula claimed, State Affairs Committee (SAC) Chairman Ramnath Dhakal flayed the CIAA chargesheet for letting the political and administrative leadership off the hook.
The SAC report states that besides the police officials, both the then home ministers and home secretaries should be held responsible for the scam. “It’s strange that the parliamentary report and the chargesheet filed by the anti-graft body are different,” Dhakal told Sajha Sawal. “Our report has implicated both police chiefs and political and administrative leadership.” “Such a big deal cannot happen without the involvement of political leadership,” he said.
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