. KATHMANDU: The Supreme Court has set a hearing on the case filed against 18 persons, including the then managing director of Nepal Telecom, Sunil Poudel.
A division bench of Special Court Chairman Sudarshan Dev Bhatta and Justices Dilli Ratna Shrestha and Bidur Koirala will hear the case on Monday.TAG_OPEN_p_9 Earlier, the hearing was postponed after the plaintiffs and defendants’ lawyers repeatedly filed applications.
} The defendants have been accused of colluding and corrupting in the course of upgrading the billing system of Nepal Telecom. The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) has demanded Rs 330 million from them.
According to the indictment, Poudel and others had signed an agreement with the Chinese company AsiaInfo Linkage Technology on December 2011 to purchase the Convergent Real-Time Billing and Customer Support (CRTB&CS) system.TAG_OPEN_p_7
The system was intended to integrate telecommunication services including GSM Mobile, Fiber, Internet, leased line, wireline and wireless broadband into a single platform and calculate and update charges instantly through real-time billing.TAG_OPEN_p_6
As per the purchase agreement, the annual maintenance agreement provides for 6 years of service and annual maintenance (AMAC) charges will be paid at a reduced rate of 5 percent.TAG_OPEN_p_5 However, the CIAA has filed a corruption case saying that the process was against the law.
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