NAB recovers Rs2.4 billion in 11 months

ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) released the report of its performance of the last 11 months according to which it arrested 476 people on different charges of alleged corruption, authorised 216 complaints verification, 239 inquiries, 79 investigations and filed 340 corruption references in Accountability Courts across the country.

During 11 months from October 2017 to September 2018, 72 accused persons were convicted by the respective Accountability Courts in various references of corruption filed by NAB and recovered Rs2410.250 million.

The NAB since its inception has received 394,085 complaints, authorised 13,081 complaints verification, 8,496 inquiries, 4,101 investigations and filed 3,386 corruption references in the respective accountability courts and recovered Rs297.483 billion from the corrupt and deposited that to the national exchequer. Currently, 1,210 corruption references are under process in 26 Accountability Courts across the country against 8,975 accused involving an amount is Rs895.279 billion. The anti graft body intends to file requests in the Accountability Courts for early hearing of all the corruption references so the looted money should be recovered and the criminals should be brought to justice as per the law.

According to NAB's report, Chairman NAB Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal after assumption of his responsibilities had announced that eradication of corruption would be top priority of NAB. The NAB during the last 11 months had initiated complaint verifications, inquiries and investigations across the board against politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen and private persons etc on allegations of corruption and corrupt practices, white collar crimes, bank frauds, housing and cooperative societies’ scandals through cheating public at large and modarba/moshaka cases on the ploy of Islamic banking etc.

The chairman rejuvenated NAB to eradicate corruption and has directed all the DGs of NAB for not sparing any corrupt and bring them to the dock by adapting the policy of " seeing the case not face." The chairman regularly reviews the progress of NAB headquarters and all the DGs of NAB at their respective regional bureaus to overcome the shortcomings. The comparative figures are indicative of the hard work and working of all ranks of NAB where fight against corruption is being taken as a national duty.

On the directions of chairman NAB, all complaints are being scrutinized during weekly complaint review meetings and all the DGs of the Regional Bureaus are ensuring not only self respect of the accused but are also responding very expeditiously to all the complaints in accordance with the law. The Chairman NAB Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal believes that corruption is the root cause of all our problems and is eating all our resources. Following the initiatives taken by NAB for eradication of corruption, the ratio of corruption has decreased from 175 to 116 which is remarkable achievement for Pakistan.