NAB prepares proactive anti-corruption strategy

Islamabad

National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry has said that eradication of corruption is top priority of NAB. The NAB management has chalked out a proactive Anti-Corruption Strategy which has acknowledged by Transparency International (TI), World Economic Forum and Pildat in their reports, says a press release.

He directed NAB officers to double their efforts in order to come up to the expectations of the nation to eradicate corruption which is major hurdle in the progress and prosperity of the country.

The chairman said that NAB’s operational methodology has set three stages for proceeding of cases from complaint verification to inquiry and inquiry to investigation. He said that we have devised Partly Quantified Grading System (PQGS) in 2014 to review and evaluate the performance of all NAB Regional Bureaus about their strengths and weaknesses. The initiative of annual inspection of all regional bureaus of NAB has proved very successful in enhancing the performance of NAB Headquarter and it’s regional bureaus in order to overcome their weaknesses pointed out during by NAB’s inspection and monitoring team. 

The chairman said that NAB has geared up to perform its national duty by adopting Zero Tolerance Policy across the board to eradicate corruption from the country. NAB has emphasised upon its NAB officers to double their efforts to arrest corrupt and recover ill-gotten and looted money of innocent from corrupt and deposit them in the national exchequer. He said that during the tenure of the present management, NAB has recovered Rs45 billion in only two and half years and deposited in the national exchequer which is a remarkable achievement of NAB.

NAB during the period of present management of three years have recovered Rs45 billion from corrupt and deposited in national exchequer which is a record achievement. The figures of complaints, inquiries and investigations are almost double as compared to the same period of 2014, 2015 to 2016. The comparative figures for the latest three 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 trusted in the NAB.

The chairman said that NAB has established its first Forensic Science Lab (FSL) in NAB and has rationalize its workload and timelines have been prescribed for efficient, effective and expeditious disposal of cases putting a maximum limit of 10 months which is a challenging target to investigate cases of even white collar crimes. NAB has also introduced a new System of Combine Investigation Team (CIT) in order to benefit from the experience and collective wisdom of senior supervisory officers, a system of CIT comprising of Director, Additional Director, Investigation Officer and a Senior Legal Counsel has been put in place. This is not only lending quality to the work but also ensuring that no single individual can be influenced the proceedings. He said that concept of CIT has proved very successful in order to improve quality of inquiry and investigations and benefit from the experience and collective wisdom of senior officers.

NAB has filed 12 references in the Rs22 billion Modarba Scam and recovered Rs1 billion and 73 crore from Modaraba Scam besides properties and vehicles etc. NAB so far has arrested 34 accused in Modarba scam including Mufti Ehsan-ul-Haq, Mufti Ibrar-ul-Haq, Hafiz Muhammad Nawaz, Moeen Aslam, Obaidullah, Mufti Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, Sajjad Ahmed, Asif Javed, Ghulam Rasool Ayubi, Muhammad Hussain Ahmed, Hamid Nawaz, Muhammad Irfan, Bilal Khan Bangash, Matiur Rehman, Muhammad Numan Qureshi, Syed Aksheed Hussain, Muhammad Adil Butt, Muhammad Saqib, Umair Ahmed and Khan Muhammad, etc.

To create Awareness against the ill effects of corruption among the youth of Pakistan which is our future, NAB in collaboration with HEC signed a MOU in 2014 and in a very short span of time established over 45,000 Character Building Societies (CBSs) in various universities/colleges and schools to create awareness against corruption as youth are considered a vanguard in this fight. NAB has target that the number of Character Building Societies (CBS) should reach at least at 50 thousands at the end of 2017 in order to aware more and more students about the ill effects of corruption so that menace of corruption should be checked at an early stage.