Agency: With claims and counter claims, a few things will decide whether corruption has occurred in the Economic Stimulus Plan’s (ESP) Nu 3 billion (bn) Concessional Credit loans given at 4 percent.
The only agency that has the legal right and statutory authority to investigate allegations of corruption in Bhutan is the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) which also has to secure a court order given the Financial Services Act (FSA).
ACC possesses a range of investigatory powers, such as obtaining documents and financial records. Therefore, ACC has so far taken the entire loan data base of the ESP and also some particular loan files.
The first thing for ACC to check will be to see if the loans are eligible under the respective ESP categories.
The second checklist will be to see if the loan was processed and approved by the Bhutan Development Bank Limited’s (BDBL) ESP team and various committees, including the final approval committee in a transparent and fair manner.
What will have to be looked at here is how other similar proposals were rejected to check if there was no favoritism. For example, if there are two similar proposals with similar conditions, and one gets rejected and the other approved then it could raise eyebrows.
Along with this, ACC will have to see if the BDBL ESP team and committees followed all the proper standard operating procedures and protocols in evaluating and approving loans.
After checking the loan approval process, the next stage will be to look at the disbursal of the money and how it was used.
Here, the BDBL management said that if the supplier is in Bhutan or India then they would deposit the money in the account of the supplier directly and not give it to the client. In the case the purchase is from a private party then a sale deed would be looked at and money transferred to the account of the seller.
However, the BDBL management said that for purchases made from third countries, it does not have the facility to pay the suppliers there directly since convertible currency is involved. In such cases money is given to the loan client and a receipt is taken later to show the money has been sent.
Here, ACC will then have to check for details with the loan clients. The loan clients may have all the necessary bills and paper work, but what the ACC will look for to verify is the bank transactions.
ACC is likely to use an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system to track the payments online to detect anomalies as it will be very cumbersome for humans to do it.
Based on the original complaint submitted to it, ACC is likely to focus more on three cases.
The first is on the case of the Health Minister’s son and his business partner’s Nu 72.7 million (mn) ESP loan for the Low Density Polythene (LDP) pipe manufacturing unit under Norwang Polyfab Private Limited in Jemina.
ACC, apart from the loan approval, will study how the money released so far has been used.
It will also have to examine allegations that the ESP money was used to purchase a building.
Norwang’s CEO has said no paper work has been done, but a relative wants to transfer a five storeys building in Babesa as his equity or capital contribution in return for Lyonpo’s son and partner handing over parts of their shares in the companies to him.
ACC will be expected to look at the transactions on this one.
The second specific case that ACC will look at in more detail will be the that the Prime Minister’s brother’s case.