Apex court to govt...: Amend NAB Ordinance by Feb or SC will do it

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday granted time until February for making amendment to the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) 1999 with particular reference to provisions relating to plea bargain and voluntarily returns and sought compliance report and observed that the government must make amendments otherwise the apex court would do the same.

A three-member bench of the apex court headed by Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed heard a suo motu case relating to amendment to some provisions of National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) 1999. The court had taken up the matter on a suo motu initiated on the basis of an observation made by former Supreme Court judge Justice Amir Hani Muslim some two years back during the hearing of an appeal filed by the NAB. The judge had deplored the powers of the NAB chairman to allow an offender found guilty of corruption to get off scotfree without any stigma after voluntarily returning the embezzled money.

In some cases, the accused, after paying the embezzled amount, were even allowed to join their previous jobs from which they had been fired for committing corruption.

Justice Hani had observed that Section 25(a) of the NAO, prima facie, seemed to be in conflict with the provisions of the Constitution and, therefore, the vires of this provision needed to be examined.

He had further observed that the issue concerned the question of public importance having far-reaching effects that had a direct bearing on the fundamental rights of the citizens.

Similarly, the apex court had also restrained former NAB chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry from approving the voluntary return deal till the time the court decided the fate of the provision.

The order had emphasised the need for laying down certain principles regarding cognizance of the NAB in corruption matters under Section 9 of the NAO to further examine whether the bureau could extend its jurisdiction to take cognizance of the case which fell within the domain of anticorruption authorities or the Federal Investigation Agency.

The Supreme Court had also felt the need of examining Section 9 of the NAO after realising that NAB had started taking cognizance of petty matters that involved amounts less than Rs100 million when the ordinance was legislated primarily to counter mega scandals.

On Thursday, senior lawyer of the Supreme Court Farooq H Naek informed the court that as a Parliamentary Committee had already been constituted by the previous National Assembly for suggesting amendments to the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) 1999 therefore, he submitted that the committee will also be asked to deliberate on these provisions for which he sought some time.

During the hearing, Deputy Attorney General Sohail Mahmood also submitted that he was aware of the meeting held the other day in this regard hence he requested the court that some time might be granted to the said committee for suggesting amendments to the NAO Ordinance 1999 in the light of observations earlier made by the apex court.

Meanwhile, the court after hearing to the parties granted time till first week of February for making necessary amendment to the NAO Ordinance 1999 and directed for submitting compliance report and adjourned further hearing.