Eradication of corruption our national duty: NAB chief

ISLAMABAD: Chairman National Accountability Bureau Qamar Zaman Chaudhry has said that eradication of corruption is our national duty and asked NAB officers to double their efforts for eradication of corruption by adopting Zero Tolerance Policy across the board.

“It is encouraging for NAB that the Planning Commission of Pakistan for the first time has been made Anti-Corruption part of development agenda in Pakistan in the context of governance and included a chapter devoted to issues of corruption in the 11th Five Year Plan in order to achieve the goals for eradication of corruption,” he said while addressing the NAB officers after two-day annual inspection of NAB Rawalpindi at the NAB Rawalpindi Bureau.

Qamar Zaman Chaudhry said that NAB is essentially a complaint-driven organisation and during the last 16 years has received about 326,694 complaints from individuals and private/ public organisations. During this period, NAB authorised 10,992 complaint verification, 7,303 inquiries, 3,648 investigations, filed 2,667 corruption references in respective accountability courts and the overall conviction ratio is about 76 percent.

He said the NAB’s prime focus is 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. Since NAB’s inception, one of NAB’s major achievements has been the recovery of around Rs285 billion of ill-gotten money which was deposited in the national exchequer which is a remarkable achievement of NAB.

The chairman NAB said that NAB Rawalpindi has played prominent role in contributing towards the overall performance of NAB. He directed all officers of NAB Rawalpindi to adopt and demonstrate absolute fairness and transparency in discharge of their national duties.

While appreciating the performance of NAB Rawalpindi he urged the officials to double their efforts in performance of their national duty by adopting Zero Tolerance Policy across the board to eradicate corruption.