NAB committed to eradicating corruption at all costs: chairman

ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman, Justice (R) Javed Iqbal, has said that corruption is cancer which is a major hurdle in the development of the country. “The (sic) NAB is absolutely committed to eradicate corruption at all cost with iron hands across the board and has recovered Rs296 million from corrupt people and deposited in the national exchequer. Not a single penny has received by any NAB employee as they considered eradication of corruption their national duty,” he made these remarks while chairing a monthly meeting of the NAB regional bureaus to review their performance at NAB headquarters. The NAB chairman directed all the Bureau DGs to pursue all corruption cases according to merit and transparently as per law.

During the meeting, thorough deliberation of the performance of all regional bureaus and NAB headquarters, including operation, prosecution and awareness and its prevention divisions, was reviewed and measures taken by the present NAB management in order to further improve its performance and efficiency.

The NAB chairman said that the Bureau has chalked out a very comprehensive anti- corruption strategy for eradication of corruption. The operational methodology of NAB for processing of all corruption cases from complaint verification, inquiry and investigation was also reviewed.

The chairman directed that NAB’s investigation officers strictly follow the Code of Conduct and zero tolerance policy on the basis of evidence as per law. He said that NAB has geared up and perfected its procedures. He said that to close the possibility of any single NAB officer influencing the discharge of official inquiry/investigation, the concept of a “combined investigation team” (CIT) has been introduced where two investigation officers and a legal consultant are working as a team for a fair, transparent and unbiased, inquiry/ investigation.

He said that prosecution was also given targets and, as a result of endeavors, the accountability court conviction ratio is now 76%. He said that feed back received about NAB’s anti-corruption strategy of awareness, prevention and enforcement is very encouraging. “The anti-corruption strategy of NAB proved very successful,” he said adding that NAB, with improved infrastructure and rationalised workload, timelines have been prescribed for efficient, effective and expeditious disposal of case from complaint verification-to- inquiry-to investigation and finally to a reference in the Accountability Court.

He said that youth is the future of Pakistan; therefore, NAB will continue its policy to give special emphases on involving youth in order to aware them about the ill effects of corruption from an early age so that they may hate corruption in all its forms in future.

The chairman further said that NAB, in collaboration with HEC, has established more than 55,000 character building societies (CBS) in all the leading universities/colleges across the country to build an effective edifice against corruption which will be increased up to 60,000 during 2018.

He said that the performance of all NAB regional bureaus would be conducted on midterm and annual basis at a given criteria under quantified grading system in order to review and further improve the performance of officers/officials of NAB as with better quantitative and qualitative improvements in operational efficiency index, rationalised workload, clearly drawn job descriptions and institutional support and supervision.

He said that monitoring and evaluation system (MES) has been developed for catering the needs of all concerned having salient features of maintenance of data at each stage, including complaint entry, complaint verification, inquiry, investigation, prosecution stage and record preservation of regional board meetings and executive board meetings, including case brief was discussed and decided that monitoring and evaluation (M& E) system will be implemented forthwith with the ability to analyse data in qualitative and quantitative form having warnings and alarms system for violators.

The NAB chairman appreciated the devoted efforts of all regional bureaus of NAB and directed all officers to double their efforts in eradication of corruption and to recover looted money from corrupt people as NAB is determined to make Pakistan corruption free at any cost.