125 Depositors, Smallest First: Inside the Slow Grind of Cooperative Refunds

Kathmandu — The news that 125 depositors across two troubled cooperatives have finally received their savings back carries an emotional weight that outstrips its modest scale. For the 35 members of Laligurans Cooperative and the 90 of Tapai Hamro Cooperative, it is the first tangible proof that money they had feared lost can actually be recovered. But the way this refund has been structured reveals as much about the limits of the recovery system as about its progress.

The most significant detail is the order in which people are being paid: the committee has deliberately started with depositors holding the smallest amounts. This is a considered policy choice, not a technicality. Small depositors are typically those who can least afford to lose their money — daily-wage earners, retirees and low-income households for whom even a modest sum represents real security. By clearing them first, the committee maximises the number of people made whole while spending relatively little, and eases the most acute hardship early. It is, in effect, a triage system that prioritises the many over the large.

That same logic, however, exposes an uncomfortable reality about the scale of what has been achieved. Refunds are being made from money recovered through loan collection and asset management — in other words, the committee can only return what it manages to claw back from the cooperatives' outstanding loans and properties. This is the crux of the entire problem. The refunds are not being drawn from a state bailout or a guarantee fund; they depend entirely on how much of the misused money can be physically recovered, which is a slow, contested and uncertain process.

The phrase describing a phased, category-by-category rollout is therefore doing a lot of quiet work. It signals that larger depositors will have to wait, and that their repayment hinges on future recoveries that may or may not materialise in full. For someone who deposited a substantial sum, the message is sobering: their turn comes later, and how much they eventually receive depends on assets that are still being chased through legal channels. The sequencing protects the vulnerable, but it also implicitly acknowledges that there may not be enough recovered money to pay everyone in full.

The government's clarification that the refunded amount came specifically from loan recovery is also a carefully framed statement of principle. It draws a firm line: the state is positioning itself as a facilitator of recovery, not as a guarantor of deposits. This matters because it shapes public expectations. Depositors are being told, in effect, that their money will come from the wrongdoers' recovered funds rather than from public coffers — a stance that limits taxpayer exposure but also means the pace and completeness of refunds are tied to the often frustrating work of asset seizure and loan collection.

Placed against the backdrop of Nepal's wider cooperative crisis — where cases involving billions of rupees and tens of thousands of depositors remain unresolved — this refund of 125 people reads as a small but symbolically important milestone. It demonstrates that the recovery mechanism can actually deliver cash into depositors' hands, which is no trivial thing in a sector where many had lost hope entirely. The insistence that the process is continuous and legally grounded is meant to reassure the far larger pool of waiting depositors that they have not been forgotten.

Yet the honest interpretation is one of cautious, incremental progress rather than resolution. The system works, but slowly, and only to the extent that money can be recovered from those who took it. For the depositors paid in this first phase, the relief is real and immediate. For everyone still waiting — especially those with larger balances — the harder truth remains: their recovery is a function not of promises, but of how much of the vanished money can actually be found and returned.