Corruption major hurdle to development: NAB chairman

ISLAMABAD: Chairman National Accountability Bureau Justice (R) Javed Iqbal has said that corruption is cancer which is major hurdle in the development of the country and the NAB is absolutely committed to eradicate corruption with iron hands across the board.

“The NAB has recovered Rs328 billion from corrupt and deposited in national exchequer. Not a single penny has received by any NAB employee as they considered eradication of corruption their national duty,” he said while chairing a meeting to review the performance of the NAB at NAB headquarters on Thursday.

During the meeting thorough deliberation of the performance of NAB all Regional Bureaus and NAB Headquarter including operation, prosecution and Awareness and Prevention Divisions of the NAB were reviewed and measures taken by the present management of NAB in order to further improve the performance and efficiency of NAB were discussed and directed to be implemented in letter and spirit.

Chairman NAB Justice (R) Javed Iqbal directed all DGs of NAB to pursue all corruption cases according to merit and transparently as per law. He said that NAB has chalked out a comprehensive anti-corruption strategy for its eradication. “The operational methodology of NAB for processing of all corruption cases from complaint verification, inquiry and investigation was also reviewed,” he said.

The chairman NAB directed the NAB investigation officers to strictly follow Code of Conduct and zero tolerance policy on the basis of evidence as per law.

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 feed back received about NAB’s anti-corruption strategy of Awareness, Prevention and Enforcement is very encouraging.

He said 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. He further said that NAB in collaboration with HEC has established more than 55 thousands 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 thousands till Dec 2020.

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