Passport impasse: Stock critically low, Nepal can’t accept fresh deliveries due to corruption case

With French supplier exiting and existing stock depleting, the government is paralysed over whether to distribute passports supplied by German firms named in a corruption case.

Nepal’s passport department is running critically low on booklets—fewer than 45,000 remain—even as half a million passports supplied by a German company sit unused, caught in a legal and political standoff following a corruption case that has now drawn in the German government.