Eradicating corruption, money laundering top priority: NAB chief

ISLAMABAD: Chairman National Accountability Bureau Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal has said the top-most priority of NAB is to eradicate the menace of corruption, money laundering, misuse of authority and taking the mega corruption and white-collar crime cases to their logical conclusion as per law. “All resources are being utilised to achieve the targets of zero corruption and 100 percent development,” he said while chairing a high-level meeting held at the NAB headquarters to review the overall performance.

Chairman NAB Justice (R) Javed Iqbal reiterated that the Bureau had no affiliation with any political party and individual but its only affiliation was with the state of Pakistan. He said the anti-corruption policy devised by NAB is to purge the country from corruption and corrupt practices, which have started yielding excellent results. It is duly acknowledged by 59 percent people of the country as reflected in the recent surveys of Gillani and Gallup.

He said the NAB is a focal organisation of the UN convention against corruption and is considered a role model in the anti-graft institutions of SAARC countries, which is an honour for Pakistan.

The chairman NAB said the Bureau itself has prescribed timeframe of 10 months for the conclusion of complaint verifications, inquiries and investigations, besides constituting Combined Investigation Teams (CIT) for benefitting from the collective wisdom of senior officers, which is lending quality to the standard of inquiries and investigations.

He said the NAB has arranged training programmes for its investigation officers and prosecutors for their capacity building. The chairman NAB said that the NAB officers consider eradication of corruption as their national duty and the recent increase in complaints registration manifests the people’s confidence in the bureau. He said the NAB has established a state-of-the art forensic science laboratory having modern facilities, including anaylsing digital forensic, question documents and fingerprints.

He said the lab helps investigation officers in conduct of investigations of cases on the basis of solid evidence. “Due to this reason, NAB has maximum conviction ratio of 68.8 percent in accountability courts as compared to other such anti-corruption institutions,” he said.