NAB’s briefing to Senate standing committee held

Islamabad
Only 6,163 cases came to the inquiry table among the total 279,332 complaints received by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) since its inception. Other cases were disposed of or referred to other departments.
The statistics were shared at a meeting of the Standing Committee on Law, Justice and Human Rights. The meeting featured a detailed briefing on the mandate, jurisdiction and performance of NAB and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). In FIA, 2,978 cases are currently under investigation and 9,274 cases are pending in court.
The NAB director general and FIA officials shared details of the standard operating procedures, the number of cases receives, processed and referred to the other departments. They answered tough queries raised by the parliamentarians.
NAB Director General Irfan Mangi shared that since the inception, the NAB has investigated 3,077 cases among which inquiry was completed in 2,776 cases and 301 cases are under process.
Highlighting reasons behind delay in cases, he informed that in 2014, the NAB gave deadline of June 30, 2015 to the region to complete pending cases and as a result, 70 per cent of old cases have been resolved and 30 per cent are still pending due to procedural issues and lack of manpower. The NAB officials shared with media that cases again Sharif's are among the pending cases.
Answering to a question regarding action against fake complaints, the NAB DG said that they have taken action in three cases. “Usually the case is disposed of when the complaint is proved bogus at the inquiry stage instead of taking it to the investigation level,” he said responding to the criticism came from Senator Saeed Ghani. The Senator was of the opinion that lack of action against fake complainant makes it easy for any person to defame others.
Talking about the share of NAB in money recovered from the corruption cases, the DG said that NAB has recovered Rs263 billion and from that only Rs2 billion were received by the NAB which makes 0.6 per cent of the total amount. “Among the total amount received, 80 per cent of the money was used for the NAB budgetary purposes,” said the NAB DG.
He explained that in corruption cases, NAB deposits 100 per cent amount to the government and claim 25 per cent later, in bank default, they receive 3 per cent from the bank which is deposited to the government and 25 per cent of that is claimed where as in cases of public at large, not a single penny is charged.
Mangi said that according to a recent change in the NAB rules, the Bureau will only deal with cases involving an amount of more than Rs100 million. The Senators suggested NAB to differentiate between mega corruption cases and high profile cases rather than confusing high profile small cases with the mega corruption cases. They also criticized Bureau for sharing details of the cases with media at the investigation or inquiry stage. The NAB denied any such sharing and said that the complainant take their cases to media and the information never is leaked from NAB.
In the end, Standing Committee Chairman Senator Muhammad Javed Abbasi appreciated the role of NAB.