 |
| |
WEEKLY
SECTIONS |
 |
|
 |
| Government stops NAB from presenting annual report |
|
|
|
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
By Muhammad Ahmad Noorani
ISLAMABAD: The government is preventing the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) from its mandatory function of publishing its annual report for 2008, which could reveal more horrible details than what has already been made public about the beneficiaries of the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO).
Besides the cases, closed under the NRO, this unpublished report could disclose details of the cases in which accused persons were acquitted without any prosecution, and the cases which were withdrawn or not considered after the inquiry. It was no other than the then law minister who formally ordered the NAB to not prepare or publish its annual report for the year 2008.
“Besides disallowing of this report, the NAB was ordered not to proceed against any politician or parliamentarian,” sources said, adding: “Regular phone calls from the Law Ministry and other top government offices to relieve certain persons, accused in heinous cases, was another story.”
According to the format defined in the NAB law known as National Accountability Bureau Ordinance, any complaint filed with in the NAB is first considered for an inquiry. At the inquiry stage either a complaint is finalised or closed.
The closed ones are ignored while the finalised complaints are sent for proper investigation. Again at the investigation stage, the inquiry is either closed or finalised. After ignoring the closed ones, the finalised investigations are converted into a NAB reference.
Besides the NRO, the parallel scheme of giving clean chit to powerful elites was the “NRO-bypass strategy”. In the year 2008, a large number of complaints were either ignored at the inquiry stage or during the investigation.
According to concerned officials, these closed inquiries and investigations involved scams of billions of rupees and the cases mostly involved politicians or near and dear ones of the top guns of the present government.
The second tactic of giving save passage to the accused was comprised either withdrawing cases or getting them acquitted through a ‘silent’ prosecution. Officials’ rough estimates show that through the NRO-bypass strategy more than Rs 500 billion looted public money was forgiven.
Officially, the NAB chairman is supposed to submit a comprehensive report on the organisation’s activities and complete performance of a year to the president and publish it for general public before the March 31, 2010.
The annual report for 2007 was submitted in 2008. Clause of 33-D of the NAB ordinance reads: “NAB to submit an annual report: 33D. The chairman NAB shall as soon as possible after the end of every calendar year but before the last day of March next following, submit to the President a report of its affairs for that year which report shall be a public document and on its publication copies thereof shall be provided to the public at a reasonable cost.”
According to credible sources a section of the NAB, deputed to collect relevant data and prepare this report, had started its work but the govt-planted people in NAB leaked the information and Bureau was ordered to stop all activities in this regard.
However, the data was compiled to some extent and if ordered by President Asif Ali Zardari, the NAB chairman could present it to the president within a week time. NAB spokesman Ghazni Khan, when approached by The News and was asked about the reason of not publication of this annual report which was mandatory for the Bureau under the law, said: “No comments.”
|
|
|
| Back
| Send
this story to Friend | Print
Version |
|
|
|
ISSN 1563-9479 
