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Nepal has jailed two former ministers and more than a dozen other people for scamming citizens with the false promise of resettling them abroad as refugees, a court official said on Wednesday.
According to a Kathmandu district court official, former Deputy Prime Minister Top Bahadur Rayamajhi was sentenced to four years in prison and fined 40,000 rupees (about $260), while former Interior Minister Bal Krishna Khand received a two-year jail term and a 20,000-rupee fine.
The court also convicted 14 other defendants, while seven were acquitted.
The scam targeted Nepalis who had missed the official third-country resettlement programme for Bhutanese refugees, which ended in 2018.
Victims were allegedly promised resettlement in countries such as the United States in exchange for large sums of money, but received no assistance.
The refugee crisis dates back to the early 1990s, when more than 100,000 ethnic Nepalis fled Bhutan after changes to the country’s nationality laws left many members of the Nepali-speaking Lhotshampa community without citizenship.
Following years of failed negotiations over their return, a third-country resettlement programme operated between 2007 and 2018, with most refugees relocating to the United States and others settling in Europe, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
According to Nepali media, the fraud affected hundreds of people who paid money in the hope of qualifying for resettlement but were never processed.
Police launched an investigation after receiving multiple complaints and made the first arrests in March 2023.
