This country needs ethical and moral values training from elementary schools to top nation ruling officials!
Cyber crime and my IIT K batch-mate Pulin Kinkhabwala
Last year I received one e-mail from a batch mate of IIT K settled in Chicago, USA, regarding he and his son's visit to Kathmandu and Mansarovar. I was very excited to hear from a friend whom I am hearing after 1975. I had traveled all the way to Chicago in 1975 and spent two weeks there with my elder sister. Some how I had guessed that some my batch mates would be surely there in and around Chicago areas, however, I had no contact details. I was unfortunate to miss meeting these couple of batch-mates then who were residents there.
He requested me to recommend some reliable travel agent here in town. I was very surprised to get information from him that travel agents of Nepal are not reliable. I advised him that if that information is true then track down international tourists who would be in a better position to recommend some good reliable party here. He insisted that I recommend one whom I can trust. I gave him a party I knew of and suggested him to deal directly with him without involving me in between because I was too occupied with my own work. They started communicating about the program. I thought everything was going on in track. However, one fine day they informed me that the mail of the local party has been hacked and Pulin's money has been diverted to Agricultural Bank of China by the hacker. The Chicago bank contacted the China bank who unformed the Chicago bank that the money has been withdrawn and the account holder is its genuine customer. They even offered the Chicago bank to give details about the address of that customer and were willing to take action on that customer, however, as per the law they needed a request letter from CIB, Nepal through the services of interpole.
The local party went and lodged complaint to the Criminal Investigation Board (CIB) of Nepal. When Pulin arrived at Kathmandu I took him to CIB office. They told us that the investigation is on and will act on it after receiving the report from criminal experts. Pulin requested them to take the case to Interpol so that Chinese bank could take action on that account holder. CIB told us that they could go ahead with that process only after receiving report from investigation agency. We waited and didn't get the reply for couple of days. The whole plan of touring around the valley was disturbed. Pulin wanted to visit heritage centers specially areas affected by the last Nepal earthquake (2015). Any way we did cover the tour. However, we couldn't get CIB initiate process of informing the Interpole.
Hampering tourism sector meaning affecting the income sources of the international Supply Chain business and affecting income sources of families of the staffs of the restaurants, bars, hotels, travel agencies, airlines companies, transport agencies, vehicle services, security services, health services and tourist guides etc etc.
The hackers are damaging the image of the country affecting the revenue earnings of the nation. The concerned stakeholders could have engaged the services of professional IT specialists of Nepal or international consultants also.
The government of Nepal do not have effective mechanism of engaging mukti stakeholders to solve such internationally sensitive problems of tourism industry.
In this technology era the concerned stakeholders are not using the power of technology and engaging concerned stakeholders to solve problems of clients of tourism business of this nation who contribute to the substantial revenue of this nation. They are allowing the fraud hacker gangs to go scot free encouraging such gangs to grow even more. Large numbers of software companies of Nepal are solving world's problems through software solutions developed from Nepal. Concerned authorities have an easy access to such companies.