Last week Kathmandu Tribune issued an article about the Helicopter Assurance Scam declaring in its final lines that arrests inside the government had been made. A piece of information that should have been further checked before being published. This is why we would like to share with you what we really know until this day.
This is the following sentence that raised a lot of unanswered questions:
The corruption also thrives inside the government infrastructures. Last month, two official members of the tourism board were arrested and sentenced to jail for their involvement
But who was arrested? When? Why? And does being charged with corruption mean being involved in the Rescue Helicopter Assurance Fraud?
According to Travel Assist, one of their sources inside the government has been talking about arrests recently made “on a list of corruption charges and that their involvement in taking bribes from the helicopter rescue industry was also being investigated.”
A piece of information we also heard off but failed to check and deliver with more support, as we thought what was being mentioned to us was on the public record.
But based on official records: There has been no jail sentence yet.
As for arrests, it has been proven to be quite difficult to define what “arrests” really means when used by others.
According to the Press Department of the Nepal Tourism Board: “It is a false rumor spread by ongoing investigation” and if it the case we are guilty of spreading it.
Nepal Tourism Board declared to us no “official arrests” were made these last months -among their staff members-.
People have been asked to answer some questions, and others are still under investigation. And it appears sometimes the word arrest is misused to describe a forced inquiry.
An Investigative Officer from the Tourist Police of Kathmandu has agreed with that statement. People are being taken in for questioning but once more, no official arrests have been recorded in their books.
So we cannot validate these allegations
Neither can we completely deny them, based on the transparency issues the Nepali government has shown in the past.
We sincerely apologize for sharing with you this information without being able to tell you if it is true or false. We hope this update will help our readers to make their own opinion on the matter.
