The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) has filed a corruption case against 14 individuals, including former finance minister Gyanendra Bahadur Karki and former finance secretary Shankar Adhikari, over alleged irregularities in the construction of Pokhara International Airport.

The case was filed at the Special Court on Thursday.

Those charged also include former secretaries Kewal Bhandari, Maheshwar Neupane and Suresh Acharya, serving secretary Danduraj Ghimire, and then director generals of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, Pradeep Adhikari and Sanjeev Gautam.

Officials of the Chinese company China CAMC Engineering Co Ltd and its representatives have also been named as defendants.

According to Ganesh Bahadur Adhikari, assistant spokesperson for the anti-graft body, the charges relate to alleged tax exemptions granted to the Chinese contractor in violation of the original agreement during the airport construction.

The CIAA has claimed a total alleged damage of Rs3.62 billion in the case.

This is the fourth corruption case connected to the Chinese-funded Pokhara airport project.

Earlier on March 21, Nepal’s anti-graft body filed a third corruption case at the Special Court against 21 individuals, including two Chinese officials, alleging the misappropriation of Rs461.5 million.

On December 7 last year, the CIAA had filed a separate corruption case at the Special Court against 55 individuals, including five former ministers and 10 former secretaries, along with a company, over alleged irregularities in the $215.96 million airport project.

That case is the largest corruption case filed at the Special Court in terms of financial magnitude under a state procurement process, with the CIAA seeking Rs8.36 billion in recovery from each of the 56 defendants. Proceedings in that case are ongoing.

A week after the first case, the CIAA filed another case against former Pokhara airport project chief Binesh Munankarmi, accusing him of amassing assets disproportionate to his known sources of income.