Sangay Gyaltsen, The former NRDCL MD
The former NRDCL MD and main accused in the multi-million-ngultrum Samtse Mining Case in an exclusive with Business Bhutan
As the impatient car horns heard from outside main town Thimphu signalled the end of another working day, an embattled Sangay Gyaltsen calmly stretched out for another doma with a strong dash of lime.
Despite a breeze that swept the evening bustle into this two-room law firm, the main accused of the Nu 113m Samtse case was sweating from the strength of the doma. He occasionally glanced the high stacks of legal papers, thousands of sheets, that he hoped would be his ticket to freedom.
“My conscious is clear,” said the 42-year-old former managing director of NRDCL, on whom the Samtse District court has slapped seven years and three months of imprisonment.
This geological engineer, who said he has “refuted all charges against him” and has appealed to the High Court, was embroiled in the case while he was the mining division head of the geology and mines department.
Not only has he pleaded innocence to the 40 cases against him but has also charged ACC on several counts.
“I was treated like a criminal and not as a civil servant,” he told about the 49 days he was under custody without an arrest warrant in 2008. An Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) official declined to comment saying the case is under court purview.
He accused the ACC for not explaining why he was arrested and not allowing his family to meet him and was denied the service of a legal counsel.
“When I was there (under ACC custody), no interrogation was done with lame excuses that the members of the ACC were out of station,” said Sangay Gyaltsen.
In his appeal to the High Court, Sangay Gyaltsen said the ACC encouraged those of the 13 co-accused to make false statements, so that he would be proven guilty of all charges.
The defendant said he is appealing because the Samtse district court did not consider his justifications but heavily relied on ACC submissions.
The ACC which produced a “Hilux full of documents” according to a January 2009 media report studied activities between 2003 and 2008 while Sangay Gyaltsen was the mining head. He is accused of forgery, bribery, official misconduct, tampering of documents, obstruction of lawful authority, deceptive practices and tax evasion.
Apart from the prison term, the court has also slapped a fine of Nu 42.65m on Sangay Gyaltsen, the amount he allegedly earned for owning the Lower Saureni Talc Mine.
How is he going to repay the amount?
“That’s my greatest worry,” said the accused who said he had no asset apart from a 21 decimal plot in Paro and his inherited property.
“I don’t understand how and why I am being asked to pay as though I have embezzled government fund,” he said.
If he is sentenced, Sangay Gyeltsen said, he will have to sell the property and serve the term.
“That is all I have,” said the accused who submitted to the Samtse court that he has not earned a single pie from any of the alleged transaction he has made.
Earlier media reports say that the ACC started investigating the case bigger than the infamous AWP scandal in 2006 following an anonymous complaint. The story, according to the accused, unfolds thus.
It was one Tashi Phuntsho, a business man, who complained to the ACC against Sangay Gyeltsen who was not allowed to export minerals he had mined.
The ACC then began investigations into the Samtse mines allegedly owned by the defendant and co-accused.
Sangay Gyeltsen accuses that he is now implicated because of the firm stand he took on enforcing government rules.
But this is not ACC’s version.
ACC Commissioner Kezang Jamtsho, in an earlier interview to the media said: “How it worked was that Nagey (the alleged accomplice of Sangay Gyeltsen) forged documents and applied for talc mines in his relatives’ names from Samtse, which in effect was actually run by him, or at times leased out by him to Indians and Bhutanese to run. In Thimphu, Sangay Gyaltsen also resorted to forgery and official misconduct to get all these mines approved in cooperation with Nagey.”
Popularity: 24% [?]
