KATHMANDU: The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) has recorded a formal statement from former Foreign Minister Narayan Kaji Shrestha regarding severe irregularities in a five-year, Rs 7.66 billion electronic passport procurement contract awarded to two German firms.

Shrestha, who served as Foreign Minister under Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ in 2024, was questioned at the CIAA’s Tangal headquarters regarding the controversial tender process.

Simultaneously, the anti-graft body issued a strict three-day summons to former Foreign Minister Arzu Rana Deuba.

Although the notice was pasted at her Budhanilkantha residence, Rana responded via email stating she is currently abroad and unable to attend within the deadline.

The CIAA is currently preparing to include her email correspondence in the official case file and file charges directly in the Special Court if a virtual interrogation proves unfeasible.

The widening corruption probe has reached the highest tiers of Nepal’s foreign service, with investigators questioning current Foreign Ministry Secretary Amrit Bahadur Rai and former Secretary Sewa Lamsal, who is presently serving as Nepal’s Ambassador to Belgium.

Lamsal, who was the Foreign Secretary during Shrestha’s ministerial tenure, gave her statement virtually from Belgium, while Rai was questioned regarding his previous role as Joint Secretary when the e-passport tender was initially floated.

To date, the CIAA has completed interrogations for 25 individuals.

This aggressive sweep follows the June 15, 2026, arrests of the Department of Passports Director General Tirtha Raj Aryal, IT Director Sunil Kumar KC, and influential political businessman Siddhartha Thapa.

The Special Court has already remanded the top officials into custody to probe how a technical sub-committee’s rejection of the non-compliant German bidder, Muehlbauer ID Services, was illegally overridden by leadership.

This explosive case follows over a year of close CIAA monitoring, which included a December 2024 raid on the passport department after a suspicious malware attack crippled the server infrastructure.

Investigators allege that the previous French supplier, IDEMIA—which had dominated Nepal’s passport supply since 2010 amid its own share of Auditor General-flagged irregularities—used the server shutdown as leverage to manipulate subsequent tender conditions.

The scandal is further compounded by intense political sensitivities surrounding the detained businessman Siddhartha Thapa—grandson of five-time PM Surya Bahadur Thapa—and separate public outrage directed at Director General Aryal for bypassing security protocols to issue diplomatic passports to Sher Bahadur Deuba and Arzu Rana on a public holiday.

With Nepal’s sole passport authority issuing 5,000 documents daily to a migration-dependent economy, the current leadership vacuum and unfolding prosecution threaten to completely disrupt the national travel document ecosystem.