NAB recovered Rs276m ill-gotton money: chairman

Islamabad

National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry said on Thursday that corruption is the mother of all evils which undermine development and also deprive people of their due rights. 

“Since NAB’s inception, one of its major achievements has been the recovery of around Rs276 billion of ill-gotten money which was deposited in the national exchequer and it is a remarkable achievement of the bureau,” he said while chairing a meeting to review performance of Awareness and Prevention Division of NAB at its headquarter.

He said that the NAB during last 16 years received about 309,000 complaints from individuals and private/public organisations and during this period it completed about 6,300 inquiries, out of which 56 percent of these inquiries matured into formal investigation and more than 80 percent investigations were taken to the stage of prosecution in the courts of law. “Out of 1,762 decided cases, we achieved conviction in 889 cases, which is a conviction rate of about 51 percent that speaks for itself,” he added. 

He said NAB’s prime focus was on cases of cheating public at large by fraudulent financial companies, bank frauds, willful bank loan defaults, misuse of authority and embezzlement of state funds by government servants etc.

He said that NAB had chalked out a comprehensive National Anti-Corruption Strategy and adopted Zero Tolerance Policy to curb corruption and corrupt practices from the country.  He said that the figures of complaints, inquiries and investigations are almost double as compared to the same period of 2014 to 2015. 

The NAB chairman said that comparative figures for the last two years are indicative of the hard work being put in by all ranks of NAB staff in an atmosphere of renewed energy and dynamism, where fight against corruption is being taken as a national duty. Increase in the number of complaints also reflects enhanced public trust in NAB.

He said that it is encouraging that for the first time that to curb corruption has been made a part of development agenda in Pakistan in the context of governance. “The Planning Commission of Pakistan has included a chapter devoted to issues of corruption in the 11th five year plan and we intend to work closely with Planning Commission to achieve the goals set in the 11th five years plan,” he added.

He said that the Pildat in its report supports the position stated above as 42% people trusted NAB against 30 % trusted police and 29% trusted government officials. “The recent report of Transparency International also rated Pakistan in Corruption Perception Index (CPI) from 126 to 117 which is a great achievement for Pakistan due to Chairman NAB's efforts,” he added.

He said that to create Awareness against the ill effects of corruption among the youth of Pakistan, NAB has signed an MoU with Higher Education Commission (HEC). Over 22, 000 Character Building Societies (CBSs) have been established in universities, colleges and schools during the last one year to create awareness against corruption as youths are our vanguard in this fight. 

He said that NAB has devised a comprehensive Quantified Grading System in NAB in order to review and further improve the performance of Officers/Officials of NAB. Under this grading system, NAB Regional Bureaus are being evaluated under a given criteria on annual basis from 2014.

He said that NAB has developed an effective Monitoring and Evaluation System including complaint entry, complaint verification, inquiry, investigation, prosecution stage and record preservation of Regional Board Meetings and ability to analyse data in qualitative and quantitative form having warnings and alarms system for violators.

Qamar Zaman Chaudhry said timelines have been prescribed for efficient, effective and expeditious disposal of case putting a maximum limit of 10 months- from complaint verification-to-inquiry-to investigation and finally to a reference in Accountability Court.

He said that NAB has initiated an Internal Accountability Mechanism (IAM) to weed out inefficient, unscrupulous and delinquent officers. Disciplinary proceedings were initiated against 83 officers / officials during the last two and half years, out of which 60 cases have been finalised with 22 major penalties, 34 minor penalties while only four were exonerated. 

He said that NAB has established its first Forensic Science LAB (FSL) in NAB Rawalpindi/Islamabad Regional Bureau which has facilities of Digital Forensics, Questioned Documents and Fingerprint Analysis. He said that NAB intends to establish NAB’s Anti-Corruption Academy at Islamabad for capacity building of NAB officers/officials.

The Chairman NAB hopes that joint efforts of all stakeholders  including civil society, media and people at large can bring sustainable systematic changes to the governance structure of our country. 

He said that with cooperation of print, electronic and social media NAB intends to hold various activities under its country wide awareness and prevention campaign on “Say No to Corruption”.