Nepal travel executives arrested for scamming millions with fake mountain rescues
Binaj Gurubacharya
Kathmandu: Authorities in Nepal have arrested six travel and mountain rescue executives accused of running fake rescues in the Himalayan nation’s high mountains to defraud international insurance companies of millions of dollars, officials said Monday.
Nepal’s Central Bureau of Investigation arrested six people from three different travel and mountain rescue operators last week, accusing them of filing false claims worth close to US$20 million ($29 million) between 2022 and 2025 and receiving the money in their accounts. All six are Nepalese citizens.
Bureau spokesman Shiva Kumar Shrestha said Monday that authorities were still investigating.
The bureau said fraudulent documents related to helicopter rescue flights, including passenger and cargo manifests, medical bills and hospital reports, were sent to insurance companies.
The agency said 171 of 1,248 recoveries a company claimed were fraudulent, leading to more than $10 million in wrongful payments. Another is accused of fabricating 75 of 471 claimed rescues and fraudulently claiming US$8 million, while the last is accused of making 71 false claims totaling more than US$1 million.
Every year, thousands of mountaineers come to Nepal to climb the highest Himalayan mountains, and tens of thousands more come to trek the mountain trails to the base camps of these high peaks.
Scores of climbers die every year and hundreds are rescued due to extreme fatigue, altitude sickness or other medical problems.
The mountains have few roads and limited medical facilities; so rescue teams often have to charter expensive helicopter flights to transport patients to hospitals in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital.
High altitude climbers are required to show proof of insurance covering helicopter rescue before climbing permits are issued.
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