The Kathmandu District Court has ordered a halt to the share purchase process of Nepal Bangladesh Bank as IFIC Bangladesh, which holds 40 percent of the bank’s shares, reportedly wanted to sell the shares to the Chaudhary Group without proper competition and against the Nepal Rastra Bank ruling.

On 18 November 2021, ApEx had reported that IFIC was positive about selling the shares to the CG, but NRB has since declared them ‘unfit’ to buy the shares. IFIC then issued another notice asking for other buyers, whereby Moti Lal Dugar of MV Dugar Group applied. The two parties had even signed an agreement of purchase on 2 April 2021, but lately, IFIC has broken communications with Dugar and again proceeded to sell its shares to the CG. This has led Dugar to file a complaint against NBB, CG, and NRB.

Issuing the order on January 11, the court also asked the opposition NBB to submit a written reply within seven days.

Dugar has a group of seven partners and they had an internal agreement to distribute around seven percent shares to each group. They had agreed to buy at Rs 157 a share and submitted a copy of the agreement to the NRB and the Ministry of Finance.