Sun of NAB shining all over Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: In response to Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s statement, National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Justice (R) Javed Iqbal on Wednesday said that the sun of NAB was not shining only over Punjab but over the whole Pakistan to remove the darkness of the corruption and convert it into the lights of honesty.

“The NAB did not believe in adopting the discrimination attitude and bias towards anyone but aiming to take action against those who were involved in the corrupt practices as the NAB policy did not see the face but the case,” he said while speaking in the meeting of the NAB Executive Board which he chaired on Wednesday that was attended by NAB Deputy Chairman Imtiaz Tajwar, Prosecutor General Justice (R) Syed Asghar Haider and senior officials of the Bureau.

NAB Chairman Justice (R) Javed Iqbal said that the NAB’s agenda was only to make Pakistan corruption free and to recover the looted money from corrupts and deposit it back into the national exchequer.

Following taking charge of the NAB as chairman on October 11, 2017, Justice (R) Javed in his first address to the officials, directed them to take action against the corrupt without any favour and took all steps for the arrest of the proclaimed offenders of the NAB.

The NAB so far on the directives of its chairman since he took charge, arrested 226 persons and approved 972 complaint verifications, 401 inquiries and 82 investigations while 217 corruption cases were filed in the Accountability Courts and out of it the Accountability Courts awarded punishments in 39 cases as per law.

During the meeting of the Executive Board, it was told that two corruption references were filed in the Accountability Court against accused Muzzafar Nishat in 2001 and 2004 and the accused Muzzafar Nishat was proclaimed offender since 2001 and the Accountability Court announced to punish him in absentia under the clause 31-A of the NAB Ordinance 1999.

It was told the meeting that the NAB arrested Proclaimed Offender Muzzafar Nishat as per law and initiated the process against him.

The accused Muzzafar Nishat has made a request to return the looted money through plea bargain, the Executive Board of the NAB approved the request to present the plea bargain request to Accountability Court under section 25-B of the NAB Ordinance 1999 for its consideration.