The current investigation by the anti-corruption watchdog CIAA against Rastra Bank governor Bijayanath Bhattarai and director Surendraman Pradhan seems to have more to do with politics than actual wrongdoing.

Sources at the central bank led by Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat say a section of the Nepali Congress has been lobbying hard to remove Bhattarai from governorship. They say CIAA officials have been regularly meeting Koirala at Baluwatar, and these forces are being influenced by prominent businessmen who have been put on the defaulter's black list as well as accused of plundering private banks by the Rastra Bank. Bhattarai had been a prominent crusader against defaulters and also against those involved in the Nepal-Bangladesh Bank controversy. Koirala had also reprimanded Bhattarai for being over-eager in going after alleged embezzler Sitaram Prasai, whom the Maoist YCL recently apprehended after police showed no interest in arresting him.

On Sunday, the World Bank's new country director Susan Goldmark issued a statement expressing concern over the case against Bhattarai and urged that the investigation be conducted in an impartial manner. She was also worried about how the issue could bring down the morale of Rastra Bank officials and undermine the financial sector reform.

Indeed, the CIAA appears to have itself been dragged into controversy by the perception that this is a political witch-hunt. The case against Bhattarai and Pradhan was hurriedly spearheaded by a lobby inside the CIAA led by Lalit Bahadur Limbu and was opposed by others in the body. The accusation that the Rastra Bank paid KPMG Sri Lanka for work that was never done appears to be faulty because KPMG was never hired and it was actually the American company IEF, Inc. The World Bank's statement confirms this, and says it bore the travel and other costs of IEF's staffers.

Rastra Bank officials took the unprecedented step on Sunday of staging rallies and sit-ins outside the CIAA and the Special Court.