On Wednesday, Subash Nirola, director and officiating chief executive officer (CEO) of the Nepal Tourism Board (NTB), made headlines after the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee charged him with corruption and instructed the Tourism Ministry to summarily dismiss him from his posts. After a month-long enquiry, the Parliamentary committee found evidence of rampant financial irregularities at the Board, with millions of taxpayers’ money unaccounted for. According to the report, under Nirola’s watch, the NTB board of 11 members illegally amended its financial bylaws, giving sweeping powers to the CEO to dole out more than Rs 90 million in cash for various reasons without having to follow the rules laid out by the Public Procurement Act. Submitting a report each to the Tourism Ministry and the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), the Parliamentary committee has asked the government bodies to take Nirola and other Board directors to court.

The most embarrassing fact about this scandal is the shameless collective and extensive corruption at the Board, roping in joint-secretaries from the Finance and Tourism Ministries, and director-generals from the Department of Immigration, Nepal Airlines, and the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal—all members of the NTB board. As the government probed the Board’s affairs, its chairman could have suspended Nirola, but he did not dare to do so. Instead, Nirola filed a case at the courts, questioning the authority of the government to launch an investigation into the Board’s affairs. The NTB Act 1997 has made the Board such a powerful, autonomous body that its chief can only be removed by the executive committee. As a result, despite the Parliamentary direction to the Tourism Ministry to sack Nirola, the government’s hands are tied.  

Fortunately, the CIAA has taken up the investigation. If the anti-graft body lodges a case against Nirola and its fellow NTB board members at the Special Court, they will be automatically suspended and taken to judicial custody. But that ‘if’ is a big one, despite the brouhaha the Nirola case has created. The news made headlines in almost all major newspapers, TV, and radio bulletins on Wednesday and Thursday.

Still, corruption charges are notoriously difficult to prove; the CIAA is known to net small fishes while letting go of the big ones. So far, only a handful of former and then-sitting ministers have been sentenced to jail on charges of corruption. A major reason behind this infirm response to corruption is the lack of political will to clean up politics and the bureaucracy. The Nirola case gained traction only after trade entrepreneurs staged a protest against the NTB and its financial bylaws. Before the 52-day long protest, the government was either unaware of the irregularities or unwilling to check Nirola. Neither, in a democracy, is acceptable.