‘NAB adopting timeframe of 10 months to conclude white collar crimes’

Islamabad : National Accountability Bureau Chairman Justice Javed Iqbal has said that NAB under its effective and comprehensive National Anti-Corruption Strategy is committed for logical conclusion of mega corruption white collar crimes cases by adopting “NAB’s Faith-Corruption free Pakistan” Policy as the figures of complaints in 2019 were much better as compared to the figures of complaints received in 2018, says a press release.

The overall complaints in 2019 were 53,643 and processed 42,760 whereas complaints in 2018 were 48,591 and processed 41,414. NAB during 2019, processed 1,308 complaint verifications, 1,686 inquiries and 609 investigations and recovered Rs141.542 billion from corrupt elements whereas Rs466. 069 billion have been recovered since 2000 which is a great achievement as per the annual report of 2019 of NAB.

He said that NAB has introduced a new concept of Combine Investigation Team (CIT) in order to benefit from the experience and collective wisdom of senior supervisory officers, a system of CIT comprising of Director, Additional Director, Investigation Officer and a Senior Legal Counsel has been put in place. This is not only lending quality to the work.

The accumulative success ratio of NAB is 68.8% in 2019 with 1983 successful disposal of cases. NAB has established its state of the art Forensic Science Laboratory in NAB Rawalpindi. In 2019, 15,747 questioned documents and 300 thumb impressions were analysed in 50 cases and forensic analysis was carried out on 74 digital devices (Laptops, Mobile phones, Hard Disks etc).

NAB had filed 1,219 corruption references in respected Accountability Courts which are under trial involving more than Rs900 billion. Justice Javed, said that absconders and proclaimed offenders would be arrested and taken to task as per law to recover looted money from them and will deposit in national exchequer.

The chairman NAB said that NAB is fully geared up to eradicate corruption. He directed all Regional Bureaus of NAB to file applications in respected accountability courts for early expediting the under trial corruption references. He directed all prosecutors to pursue the cases with full preparations as per law on the basis of solid and incriminating evidence to conclude the corruption references to their logical conclusion.

He said that NAB is the only institution in the world which has itself fixed timeframe of 10 months to conclude white collar crime cases besides it is important to note here that NAB has not only proved its performance with its actions not words impartiality and fairness as per law and started across the board actions against big fish.