NAB committed to curbing corruption with iron hand: chairman

Islamabad: National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry Tuesday said NAB was committed to curb corruption with iron hand by adopting zero tolerance policy across the board for corruption-free Pakistan.

Chairman NAB was chairing a monthly coordination meeting to review latest progress on the decisions taken in the previous monthly coordination meeting held at NAB Headquarters here.

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 its proactive National Anti-Corruption Strategy to eradicate corruption, NAB has received about 343,356 complaints from individuals and private/public organizations.

During this period NAB authorised 11,581 complaint verifications, 7,587 inquiries, 3846 investigations, filed 2,808 corruption references in respective accountability courts and overall conviction ratio was about 76 per cent.He said that NAB recovered Rs288 billion from corrupt which had been deposited in the national exchequer.

He said that the figures of complaints, inquiries and investigations were almost double as compared to the same period of 2015 to 2017. The comparative figures for the last three and half years were 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 was being taken as a national duty.

Increase in the number of complaints also reflected enhanced public trust in the NAB.The PILDAT in its report supported the position statedabove as 42% people trusted NAB against 30% expressed confidence in police and 29 % trusted government officials.

The recent report of Transparency International also rated Pakistan in Corruption Perception Index (CPI), improving its position from 126 to 116 which was 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 was 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 were considered a vanguard in this fight.

NAB has target that the number of Character Building Societies (CBS) should reach at least 55,000 in 2017 in order to make students aware 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’s anti-corruption strategy proved very successful which was continuing in 2017 due to its effectiveness.He said that NAB was mandated to carry out awareness activities against corruption in pursuance of Section 33C of National Accountability Ordinance (NAO).

Under NAB’s Awareness and Prevention campaign across the country, NAB has been engaging different governmental, non-governmental organizations, media, civil society and other segments of society in order to make people aware about the ill effects of corruption.