NAB deposits Rs466b in national exchequer: chairman

ISLAMABAD: Chairman National Accountability Bureau Justice (Retd) Javed Iqbal has said that NAB has so far deposited Rs466.069 billion in the national exchequer.

He said that taking mega corruption, white collar crimes cases to logical conclusion is the top priority of the NAB.

“NAB is the focal anti-corruption institution of Pakistan under United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) which has already been ratified by Pakistan with United Nations. International Economic Forum, Transparency International, PILDAT and MASHAL Pakistan have lauded NAB’s efforts of eradication of corruption,” he said in a statement on Friday.

The chairman said that NAB has rejuvenated its operations, prosecution, human resource management, training and research, awareness and prevention divisions after bringing some improvements.

The chairman while presenting the details said that the NAB had received 53,643 complaints in 2019 and of which 42,760 had been concluded. NAB had received 48,591 complaints in 2018. Out of which 41,414 had been completed. “The increase in the receipt of complaints to NAB about corruption related matters have shown increased in people confidence over the NAB,” he said.

He said that in 2019, 1,308 complaint verification were conducted while 1,686 inquiries, 609 investigation were completed. “The NAB had recovered Rs 363 billion from the corrupt elements and deposited into national exchequer. The overall conviction ratio is about 68.8 percent which is achievement as comparing to other matching institutions,” he said. He said the new system of Combined Investigation Team (CIT) has also been put in place to take benefit from collective wisdom of experienced officers including Director, Additional Director, Investigation officers, Legal Consultant and Land Revenue experts for effective investigations.

He said the NAB Rawalpindi has established forensic laboratory having facilities of question documents and finger prints’ analysis.

In 2019, he said the lab conducted analysis of 15,747 question documents, 300 finger prints, 74 devices including laptops, mobile phones, hard disks and in total the analysis of 50 cases were conducted by the forensic lab.

He said the NAB has inked MoU with China in the context of China, Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects and this would help creating corruption free atmosphere in the country.

He directed regional bureaus of NAB to conduct complaint verifications, inquiries and investigations in light of concrete evidence so that the corruption cases could be taken to logical conclusion as per law and corrupt elements should be brought to justice.