Nepal UK
Nepal Police's Central Investigation Bureau has opened a second-phase inquiry into an alleged scheme in which a government computer operator hacked the national e-procurement system on behalf of paying contractors — a scandal that has left the country's entire online tender platform offline for a month and raised hard questions about the integrity of public contracting.
Nepal Police's Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) has widened its investigation into allegations that contractors paid a government employee to break into the national e-Government Procurement (e-GP) system and manipulate bids in their favour, examining roughly 25 additional contracts on top of the 27 projects already confirmed as tampered with in the first phase of the probe. The case, which first surfaced with arrests in April 2026, has already led to charges against a group that includes a former cabinet minister, and has knocked the country's entire online tender platform offline since 27 August — disrupting public procurement nationwide at a time when Nepal is also trying to mobilise reconstruction contracts after last month's devastating floods. All twenty-two-to-twenty-seven accused named across reporting on the case, including former minister Bikram Pandey, deny wrongdoing or have not commented publicly; the matter remains before Kathmandu District Court and no verdict has been reached.
According to CIB findings reported by Republica, Ekantipur, Peoples' Review and Ratopati, the alleged hacker — identified as Diwakar (also spelled Dibakar) Deuja, a government computer operator based at the Dhankuta branch of the Urban Development and Building Construction Project — used programming tools, cloud servers and PHP-based scripts to breach the PPMO's IMS server and create backdoor access to the e-GP platform. Investigators allege he logged in after bidding deadlines closed, using the compromised credentials of 1,136 bidders, to view rivals' confidential financial proposals before altering rates and discount percentages in favour of contractors who had paid him. He is alleged to have operated under a fabricated identity, "Jeevan Limbu," to negotiate with contractors over WhatsApp and email. One co-accused, Bhaskar Raj Aryal, is alleged to have helped move payments via Bitcoin through a US-based intermediary, with remaining sums settled in cash inside Nepal. The Central Investigation Bureau says 313 tenders were accessed in total, of which at least 27 projects tied to 16 contractors were confirmed manipulated in the first phase; the newly opened second phase is examining a further 25 contracts.
Two examples have emerged in Nepali reporting of how the alleged scheme played out on specific public works. Kalpabriksha Builders, run by Prakash Dhungana, is alleged to have paid a bribe of around Rs 4 million to secure a contract to expand a reinforced soil retaining wall at the Banchare Danda Sanitary Landfill Site in Kathmandu Valley. Separately, investigators allege that Bikram Pandey's firm, Kalika Construction, benefited when a rival's bid discount was altered after documents were viewed through the hack, in connection with a Bagmati bridge contract on the Pathlaiya section of the Mahendra Highway.
Bikram Pandey — a senior Rastriya Prajatantra Party leader who has served as a government minister on three occasions, including as Minister of Urban Development in early 2023 — was arrested by the CIB in late April 2026 and was among 13 people initially charged, a number that later reporting put at 22 or 27 as the case file grew; the exact figure has varied across Nepali outlets as additional names have been added. Pandey chairs the Kalika Group, a construction and power conglomerate, and has faced scrutiny over government contracts before: in 2018 he was named in a Rs 2 billion corruption case over allegedly faulty construction of the Sikta Irrigation Canal, of which he was later acquitted. His brief tenure at the Urban Development ministry in 2023 drew criticism at the time, since his own construction company bid for contracts overseen by that same ministry.
Pandey has denied involvement in the current case. "As far as I remember, no bid was revised by giving any discount from the company's side for this contract, nor was this contract awarded to my company," he told Ratopati, adding that he had separately submitted a roughly Rs 67 crore bid for an unrelated Bakaiya River bridge contract and suggesting that a "criminal organisation" may have wrongly linked his company's name to the case. NepalUK was unable to reach Pandey directly for this article; his cited remarks are drawn from Nepali-language reporting. Twelve of the thirteen originally accused, including Pandey, were released on bail; Deuja, the alleged hacker, remains in custody. CIB spokesperson Senior Superintendent of Police Anupam Shamsher Rana has said only that "as the second-phase investigation is ongoing, we cannot disclose further details at present."
The scandal's most immediate practical consequence has been the shutdown of e-GP itself, Nepal's mandatory online portal for public tenders, since 27 August — a month in which the government has had to fall back on hard-copy and postal submissions for urgent procurement. Nepali contractor federations have voiced alarm at the prospect of a prolonged return to paper-based bidding, telling Ratopati they fear a resurgence of the intimidation and violence that plagued in-person tendering in the past, including the recollection of the daylight murder of a former federation president, Sharad Gauchan, and shootings linked to irrigation-project bidding. Officials have also acknowledged that the vulnerabilities exploited in this case are not new: PPMO officials cited in Nepali reporting say hackers may have been able to leak confidential bid information for four to six years before the scheme was exposed, calling into question how long public money may have been diverted through rigged contracts before anyone noticed. The Public Procurement Monitoring Office says a rebuilt "version 2" of the e-GP system is being developed and could resume operations within roughly two weeks of mid-September; NepalUK could not independently verify whether that timeline has since been met and will confirm once the platform is restored.
For a country simultaneously trying to finance flood reconstruction estimated at close to 10% of GDP, a month-long shutdown of the primary channel through which public infrastructure contracts are awarded is a serious governance problem in its own right, independent of the individual guilt or innocence of any single accused person. The case also raises a wider question for Nepalese taxpayers and the diaspora that follows public accountability at home: how many public works — school buildings, bridges, landfill and irrigation projects among those named so far — may have been awarded at inflated or manipulated rates, and what recourse exists to recover public funds if wrongdoing is ultimately proven. It is important to stress that every individual named in this article, including Bikram Pandey, is presumed innocent; charges have been filed but not proven, the case remains sub judice before Kathmandu District Court, and reported figures for the number of accused and the value of contracts affected have varied between the first and second phases of the investigation and across different Nepali outlets. NepalUK will continue to follow the case as it proceeds through the courts and as the second-phase inquiry into the additional 25 contracts concludes.
