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bdul Sattar Khan’s The Dark Tower of Accountability is a formidable work. The book not only distils the essence of his investigative reporting spanning four decades, but also lays bare the lofty claims made by various people associated with the National Accountability Bureau, the country’s premier agency for investigating high-profile corruption cases, regarding the recovery of looted public funds from convicted individuals.
It is worth outlining the key features that are likely to establish it as a pioneering document on systemic organisational corruption in Pakistan.
The author clearly defines the scope of his investigative work. It is an examination of 4,098 NAB cases. He asserts that no systematic performance evaluation or professional financial audit of the National Accountability Bureau has previously been undertaken.
The debate surrounding NAB’s performance remains fragmented at best. While politically high-profile cases continue to attract public attention and intensify the country’s political polarisation, they also provide easily marketable content for broadcast and print media alike.
The book is based on documents and records available on NAB’s official website. Even with this limited source material, it highlights a persistent lack of accountability and transparency that it points out has characterised the Bureau’s operations since its establishment in 1999, most notably reflected in the slow progress of thousands of cases that remain stuck at the ‘inquiry’ stage, in some instances for more than two decades.
In this context, one is left to wonder how such a glaring “source of huge embarrassment” for the NAB has largely escaped the scrutiny of both the media and the political opposition, considering the latter often finds itself at the receiving end of the agency’s work. This apparent oversight is not unlike the opposition’s recurring failure to critically examine the government’s fiscal performance, despite actual budget figures being publicly available on the Ministry of Finance’s website.
It estimates that around Rs 24 billion remains outstanding in plea bargain and voluntary return settlements, alongside a further Rs 120 billion discrepancy in NAB’s financial accounts.
People who have found guilty by the NAB, along with spokespersons of major political parties who appear on live television to defend their leaders or criticise political rivals, often choose to ignore the agency’s inner workings. This, the author suggests, is less a matter of access and more a reflection of a lack of sincere effort. They too, he says, could have followed the investigative path he undertook to gain deeper insight into how and why adverse decisions were reached in their cases.
The book argues that whoever has studied the Panama Papers and the nine volumes of the Joint Investigation Team report related to the NAB cases can be trusted to have a more informed understanding of the agency’s operations than many of the political spokespersons who dominate prime-time television talk shows. It notes that even when investigative stories published in print make their way onto electronic media platforms, the resulting discussions tend to focus narrowly on specific aspects of NAB’s performance, rather than offering a comprehensive critique of the institution.
Drawing on data and records from the NAB’s official website, nine volumes of the Joint Investigation Team report and documents from Transparency International, the book examines both the documented workings of the NAB and the reasons for its poor performance. It also highlights some previously overlooked or unexplained details, particularly in relation to plea bargain and voluntary return cases under the agency’s remit.
The book points to major discrepancies between the ‘actual,’ ‘determined,’ ‘agreed’ and ‘deposited’ amounts in such cases. It estimates that around Rs 24 billion remains outstanding in plea bargain and voluntary return settlements, alongside a Rs 120 billion discrepancy in NAB’s overall financial accounts.
The book is highly readable on account of the wide array of NAB cases it covers, ranging from those related to high-profile political leaders, particularly the Sharifs, to those still at the inquiry stage despite the passage of two decades since the filing of their initial reports, the Avenfield Apartments and Broadsheet cases, and the case involving the notorious Double Shah.
Alternatively, Sattar Khan’s book Dark Tower of Accountability serves as a compendium for would-be investigative journalists in that it highlights the importance of documentary evidence, as well as elaborates on various stages of a NAB probe starting with filing of a ‘complaint’ to its validation before moving on to the ‘inquiry’ and ‘investigation’ stages and finally culminating in the form of a ‘reference.’
Dark Tower of Accountability
Author: Abdul Sattar Khan
Publisher: Peace
Publications, Lahore
Pages: 142 (Hardbound)
Price: Rs 4,995
The reviewer, aLahore-baseddevelopment consultant specialising in public policy and federal budget analysis, can be reached atmna7hotmail.com