‘NAB recovers over Rs466b since its inception’

ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Justice (R) Javed Iqbal Friday said the NAB’s major focus is on corruption and corrupt practices of money laundering, cases of cheating the public at large, willful bank loan defaults, misuse of authority and embezzlement of state funds.

“Since the NAB’s inception, one of NAB’s major achievements has been the recovery of around Rs466.069 billion which is a great achievement as per the annual report of 2019 of NAB,” he said in a statement.

The NAB chairman said starting from the year 2017 which can be called basically a year of reinvigoration of the NAB, the Bureau has moved with new zeal and effort after through introspection and overhaul of procedures and all pillars of the organisation i.e. operations, prosecution, human resource management, training and research and awareness and prevention have been reactivated.

He said the overall complaints in 2019 were 53,643 and 42,760 were processed, whereas complaints in 2018 were 48,591 and 41,414 were processed. “Increase in the number of complaints also reflects enhanced public trust in the NAB,” he said.

He said the NAB during 2019, processed 1,308 complaint verifications, 1,686 inquiries and 609 investigations and recovered Rs141.542 billion from corrupt elements.

The NAB chairman said the present management of NAB has chalked out an effective and proactive anti-corruption strategy which has started been acknowledged by Transparency International (TI) Pakistan, World Economic Forum, Pildat and Mishal Pakistan.

He said the initiatives taken by the present management of NAB started yielding excellent results. “Similarly, Gilani and Gallop recent survey indicated that 59 percent people of Pakistan have full faith upon NAB which is ample evidence of NAB’s across the board accountability,” he said.

Justice (R) Javed Iqbal said due to the NAB’s proactive anti-corruption strategy, overall conviction ratio is about 68.8 percent. He said that NAB has geared up and rejuvenated to eradicate corruption within all its forms and manifestations.

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 consisting of director, additional director, investigation officer and a senior legal counsel has been put in place.

He said Pakistan is committed to United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) in eradicating corruption through its three pronged anti corruption strategy of awareness, prevention and enforcement which has started yielding excellent results.