The parliamentary special committee investigating the embezzlement of depositors’ funds by various cooperatives on Tuesday decided to correspond with political parties with national status, seeking their suggestions on how to resolve the cooperative crisis.

The panel made the decision after discussing issues related to the cooperative sector with officials from the National Cooperative Federation, the Savings and Credit Central Cooperative Association and the National Cooperative Bank Limited.

Surya Thapa, the coordinator of the committee, said the meeting decided to correspond with political parties with national status in the House of Representatives, requesting written suggestions for resolving issues related to the misappropriation of funds and the return of savings to depositors.

The meeting of the committee on Sunday decided to ask for documents from 20 cooperatives that were declared problematic by the government.

Earlier, the committee, at its meeting on June 26, had decided to seek documents from cooperatives that transferred funds to Gorkha Media Network.

Gitendra Babu (GB) Rai, the chairman of the media house, is accused of embezzling hundreds of millions of rupees in collusion with different cooperatives in Kaski, Chitwan, and Butwal. Rai is currently on the run.

After weeks of negotiations between the ruling and opposition parties, a seven-member committee led by CPN-UML lawmaker Thapa was constituted on May 28 to investigate the embezzlement of deposits in dozens of cooperatives around the country.

As per the committee’s jurisdiction as defined in its terms of reference, the committee will investigate the crisis-ridden cooperatives, their legal and institutional purposes, financial systems, regulatory arrangements, supervision and transparency, and make recommendations to the government.

Another task is to recommend measures for the immediate return of savings to the depositors of the problematic cooperatives identified by the Department of Cooperatives and the Crisis-ridden Cooperatives Management Committee.

The probe panel was formed after the main opposition Nepali Congress disrupted parliamentary proceedings for over two months demanding such a body be constituted to investigate cooperative scams.

The issue got complicated as Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Rabi Lamichhane, who is the chair of the Rastriya Swatantra Party, is also accused of misusing the money from various cooperatives. Lamichhane was managing director of Gorkha Media Network before joining politics.