First of all, let us congratulates ourselves that we have at least seven lucky Nepalese who have offshore accounts according to 'The Panama Papers'. We will probably get to know them in the coming days.
And the government should host a dinner for those in the list and our stand-up comedian and his cronies should ask for some voluntary donations for the next election from them.
Maybe, there will be more when somebody finishes going through 11.5 million leaked documents of a law firm that specializes in forming shell companies for the corrupt clowns, contractors and criminals all around the world.
It's not illegal to have an offshore account but when most of the so-called foreign investment in Nepal seems to come from the countries known as being tax havens then something is really fishy.
And the guy who is close to our Emperor is probably in the list. After all, he seems to get loans and investment from tax havens around the world for his telecom and other ventures.
At least our Nepal Rastra Bank is doing its job by holding billions of Rupees that should have gone into the guy's account. Our netas need our byaparis to launder the money and no wonder most of the big commercial complexes across the country are owned by our clowns.
Our politicians really do not need to park their ill-gotten money in such shell companies overseas. They can just deposit their bribes in the name of their drivers, domestic helps and even porters who work in the New Road area. After all, having tons of cash, land and other valuable stuff in your spouse's name carry a lot of risk and could get you in trouble. You can't just come up with the 'rich father-in-law' story every time.
Yes, most of our politicians tell us that the land registered in their wives' name was gifted by their father-in-laws and so were the hundreds of tolas of gold and silver.
I guess they thought it would be wise to marry a rich man's daughter just to be safe because you don't get paid in politics until you get into power and that might take more than a decade or two.
Even most of our byaparis who mostly have their business ties across the borders really don't have to register a company in the British Virgin Islands or somewhere in the Caribbean. They can just use the 'Hundi' guy to transfer the money from Kathmandu to Kolkata in a minute. But of course, if you are bringing back your own black money home then you might need such tax havens.
We all know that most of our so-called top leaders of the major political parties own prime property in the city valued at billions of Rupees. They have investment in gas bottling companies, media houses, commercial complex and what not.
If our superhero Lokman wants to find out who owns what then he just needs to bring in the personal aides of our corrupt clowns and parade them around town and then carry out the interrogation session at Khula Manch. If Lokman can't do that then he should quit and stay home instead of just going after minnows while the sharks continue to have all the fun.
I think our media wallahs should also learn a thing or two from investigative journalists all around the world. We need our own consortium of investigative journalists who work together to find the truth about the ill-gotten wealth of our corrupt politicians, incompetent civil servants and slimy contractors.
How can a politician who just a decade ago did not have two pairs of socks now wears watches worth millions of Rupees? How can a civil servant with his less than half a million Rupees annual salary own land and house in Kathmandu worth hundreds of millions?
We, the people seem to know a lot more about their rags to riches story while our media and government agencies assigned to investigate misuse of power seem to be out of the loop.
Our TV channels are busy going after small mundreys, flies in soft drinks and alien stuff in juices. Yes, show us the guest houses where immoral activities take place as if that will stop it from happening. This is the land where if you provide the chiya kharcha to our civil servants, you could run your own mini-gas bottling plant in your backyard.
Well, it's a good thing to go after social ills but why can't they carry out a sting operation or some investigation into where all our cooking gas cylinders disappear? Show us how our gas dealers arrange special deliveries for big hotels and residences of high ranking government officials and politicians.
Show us how the police personnel who suddenly show up at the gas depot whenever there is a delivery somehow manage to take at least six cylinders for their hakim sahebs in the midst of hundreds of angry customers who get nothing.
The Prime Minister of Iceland has had to resign because he was accused of hiding millions of dollars in a company in the British Virgin Islands. The former PM resigned even though he claimed that he paid all his taxes back home. Here in our land, our politicians will not resign even if their spouses, cousins or personal aides are caught with boras of cash. Instead they will tell the media and us the people to shut up and put up with their corrupt antics.
Our politicians and civil servants would rather help the fake VAT-Bill byaparis to evade taxes rather than going after them. It's a shame that the taxes that should be going to our state treasury so that the government can use it for development projects instead are divided amongst our byaparis, civil servants and freeloaders.
It's time for our journalists to wake up and smell the Bagmati River. Please make us aware about our corrupt thulo mancheys and from whom they make all the billions of Rupees. Please speak the truth instead of continuing to publish the lies that our politicians dole out every few minutes!
We need our own Patan Papers and maybe our journalists should go back forty years and keep a track on the wealth of our thulo mancheys since then. Our journalists should throw away their party affiliation or other petty self-interest, just do it for the love of this country and its people! You are our last hope!
Guffadi is a grumpy old man who blogs at guffadi.blogspot.com. You may contact him at maguffadi@gmail.com
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