Corruption biggest hurdle in way of prosperous Pakistan: NAB chairman

Islamabad

National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry has said that NAB intends to curb corruption with iron hands by adopting zero tolerance policy across the board for corruption free Pakistan, says a press release.

He stated this while chairing a monthly coordination meeting to review latest progress on the decisions taken in the previous monthly coordination meeting held at NAB Headquarters.

He said that considering corruption as the biggest hurdle in the way of prosperous Pakistan, NAB was established as an apex anti corruption organization with a mandate to eradicate corruption and to recover hard earned looted money of innocent people from corrupt. He said that due to NAB’s proactive National Anti-Corruption Strategy to eradicate corruption, NAB has received about 3,43,356 complaints from individuals and private / public organizations. During this period NAB authorized 11, 581 complaint verification, 7587 inquiries, 3846 investigations, filed 2808 corruption references in respective accountability courts and overall conviction ratio is about 76 percent. 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 Rs. 287/- billion of ill-gotten money which was deposited in the national exchequer which is a remarkable achievement of NAB.

He said that the figures of complaints, inquiries and investigations are almost double as compared to the same period of 2015 to 2017. The comparative figures for the last 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 PILDAT in its report supports the position stated above as 42% people trusted NAB against 30 % for police and 29 % for government officials. The recent report of Transparency International also rated Pakistan in Corruption Perception Index (CPI) from 126 to 116 which is a great achievement for Pakistan due to Chairman NAB's efforts. The World Economic Forum and Mishal Pakistan according to Global Competitiveness Index of the World Economic Forum rated Pakistan from 126 to 122 this year which is great achievement of Pakistan due to NAB efforts.

He said that to create Awareness against the ill effects of corruption among the youth of Pakistan, National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in collaboration with Higher Education Commission (HEC) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and in a very short span of time established over 45, 000 Character Building Societies (CBSs) in universities/colleges 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 in 2017 in order to aware students about the ill effects of corruption at an early age.

He said that NAB has devised Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to rationalize the workload and timelines have been prescribed for efficient, effective and expeditious disposal of cases putting a maximum limit of 10 months- from complaint verification-to-inquiry-to-investigation and finally to a reference in the Accountability Court. He said that NAB is committed to eradicate corruption from the country by adopting Zero Tolerance Policy for corruption free Pakistan. He said that NAB’s Anti-corruption strategy proved very successful which continuing in 2017 due to its effectiveness. He said that NAB hopes that joint efforts of all stakeholders can collaborate to check corruption and corrupt practices before happening with the help of all stakeholders, civil society, media and people at large.