The Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) on Thursday filed corruption and money-laundering charges against former chief immigration officer at Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA), Tirtha Raj Bhattarai, along with six individuals and two companies, alleging a large-scale bribery racket involving visit visas.

In a press release, the anti-graft body said it filed a charge sheet at the Special Court, Kathmandu, accusing Bhattarai of “deliberately setting up a system to send Nepali travellers abroad on visit visas through bribery”, during his tenure from October 9, 2024 to May 16, 2025.

According to the CIAA, Bhattarai failed to follow mandatory directives requiring all visit-visa travellers’ documents to be uploaded and archived in the immigration system. The commission accused Bhattarai and his associates of harassing travellers and extracting additional money as bribes.

The press release states that Bhattarai maintained regular contact with individuals whose interests conflicted with his official duties—namely Bal Krishna Khadka of Greenline Holidays Pvt Ltd and Dipak Bhandari of Family Holidays Travels & Tours Pvt Ltd—and took “gifts, meals and items including mobile phones” from them.

The CIAA alleges that the accused operated a coordinated mechanism in which Khadka and Bhandari collected names of outbound travellers, logged them in diaries, and calculated bribe amounts using coded notations—Rs20,000 per male traveller and Rs40,000 per female traveller. “Clear to Balk” was used as a signal, according to the charge sheet.

The commission further states that Bhattarai received bribe money “in a restaurant bag presented as a parcel” and that he gave Rs800,000 to immigration officer Yagya Raj Aryal at his home as part of the bribe-sharing arrangement.

The CIAA also noted extensive communication between Bhattarai and his alleged collaborators: 858 phone calls with Kabita Paudel; 118 with Bal Krishna Khadka, 253 with Dipak Bhandari, and 53 with Khem Prasad Subedi.

The press release says Bhattarai misused a mobile SIM registered under Paudel to exchange names of travellers, and that bribe money was routed through Paudel and Subedi for land purchases, constituting money-laundering. Paudel’s diary allegedly contains notations of repeated cash handovers to Subedi.

During the investigation, some travellers who had gone abroad on visit visas returned and testified to the CIAA that they had been “cheated, forced into different work than promised, and subjected to mistreatment abroad”, requesting action against those involved.

A laptop seized from Bhattarai’s residence on May 21, 2025 was found to contain passport images of travellers. Digital forensics also revealed that he had photographed and later deleted diary pages containing coded bribe records.

The CIAA said the accused sent 257 Nepali citizens abroad on visit visas through this deliberate setting, and that their actions violated Clause 3 of the Prevention of Corruption Act 2002. Bhattarai, Paudel and Subedi have also been charged under Section 3 of the Anti-Money Laundering Act 2008.

“The commission has therefore filed charges against Tirtha Raj Bhattarai, Yagya Raj Aryal, Bal Krishna Khadka, Dipak Bhandari, Ram Khadka, Kabita Paudel and Khem Prasad Subedi for corruption and money laundering,” the CIAA stated.

A total illicit amount of Rs79.8 million has been listed against Bhattarai in the charge sheet.

The case is now before the Special Court.