The Bhutanese Leading the way.
The Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) has launched its investigation of the Phajo Nidup case running into hundreds of millions of Non Performing Loans, double and triple mortgages and others issues.
The ACC recently detained Phajo Nidup, some of his relatives, bank officials, Phuentsholing Thromde officials, and an RSTA official.
The banks and private parties have filed around 50 plus cases against Phajo Nidup in the special separate bench created in the Supreme Court premises to handle all of the cases against Phajo from different Dzongkhags like Chukha, Phuentsholing Thromde, Paro, Thimphu and others all focused in the western Dzongkhags.
The special bench was to prevent conflicting judgments as different banks were laying claim to the same double and triple mortgaged properties along with private parties.
The special bench gave him bail after which he was detained by the ACC.
Phajo Nidup, the owner of Choden Transport and Bhutan Ply in Phuentsholing, is the center of around Nu 657 mn worth of loans many of which are double and triple mortgages and most of them are under the category of Non Performing Loans.
The Royal Monetary Authority forwarded the cases to the Anti Corruption Commission which is investigating them to see if there was collusion with bank or thromde officials.
There are also several private buyers of these same mortgaged lands who never got the lagthrams transferred to them.
In other cases, he has bought lands but not paid money or his cheque has bounced. In one case in Paro he was involved in giving fraudulent cheques of Nu 3.4 mn and Nu 19.8 mn and in another case it was Nu 6.8 mn.
In Kabesa Thimphu, Phajo agreed to buy Nu 170 mn worth of land at 4 acres but he paid only Nu 800,000 and sold the land to other buyers without paying the remaining money.
The above cases above show a spectacular failure of the Phuentsholing Thromde and Banks in not being able to detect the double and triple mortgages and the sales.
Victims have alleged possible collusion by Thromde employees and bank employees.
