ISLAMABAD – Chairman National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Justice JavedIqbal said the corrupt elements, proclaimed offenders and absconders wouldbe dealt with iron hands.In a statement, he said the NAB’s top most priority was to take whitecollar mega corruption cases to logical conclusion on scientific basis byusing modern techniques, cases of cheating public, housingsocieties/cooperative societies, fraudulent financial companies, bankfrauds, willful bank loan defaults, misuse of authority, money launderingand embezzlement of state funds etc.He said NAB’s major achievements had been the recovery of Rs. 342 /-billion of ill-gotten money of people at large which had been deposited inthe national exchequer and not a single penny had been received by NABofficers.He said NAB had rationalized its workload and timelines had been prescribedfor efficient, effective and expeditious disposal of cases putting amaximum limit of 10 months-from complaintverification-to-inquiry-to-investigation and finally to a reference in theAccountability Court.He said NAB had also introduced Combine Investigation Team (CIT) system inorder to benefit from the experience and collective wisdom of seniorsupervisory officers. This was not only lending quality to the work butalso ensuring that no single individual could influence the officialproceedings of NAB.He said NAB on bilateral cooperation, had signed a Memorandum ofUnderstanding (MOU) with China to streamline and structure and cooperationin the fields of anti-corruption.In the context of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), this cooperationwould further boost confidence in projects undertaken in Pakistan.He said an effective accountability mechanism was quintessential foreconomic growth, investment and stability of social order.The intervention by NAB had acted as a catalyst, as transparency was aprerequisite for promoting investment and economic growth.Since its inception, NAB had adopted the enforcement based approach in itsfight against corruption.Special focus was therefore being given to Awareness and Preventionactivities besides enforcement to educate the people at large about the illeffects of corruption.He said NAB had initiated complaint verifications, inquiries andinvestigations by adopting “Accountability for All” policy across the boardon alleged allegations of corruption and corrupt practices.The indiscriminate action had increased the prestige of NAB manifold due toindiscriminate and visible action against the mighty as the aim of NAB wasto apprehend the corrupt and deposit the looted amount in the nationalexchequer.NAB had filed 600 corruption references in Accountability Courts in thelast 23 months which was a record achievement as investigation of mega andwhite collar crimes is very challenging task and it takes years.NAB on regularly basis review its performance and also progress on ongoinginquiries and references. Due to this reason, the number of complaints hadbeen doubled as compared to the same period of last year from Nov 2018 toNov 2019.
The comparative figures were indicative of the hard work, transparencybeing put in by all ranks of NAB staff in an atmosphere of renewed energyand dynamism, where fight against corruption was being taken as a nationalduty.He said National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had established more than 50thousands Character Building Societies (CBSs) in universities/collegesduring the last 23 months to aware students about ill effects of corruptionas youth is considered a vanguard in this fight.NAB had devised a comprehensive Quantified Grading System in NAB in orderto review and further improve the performance of Officers/Officials of NAB.Under this grading system, NAB Regional Bureaus are being evaluated at agiven criteria on annual basis.He said NAB had developed an effective Monitoring and Evaluation Systemcatering the needs of all concerned having salient features of maintenanceof data at each stage including complaint entry, complaint verification,inquiry, investigation, prosecution stage and record preservation ofRegional Board Meetings and ability to analyze data in qualitative andquantitative form having warnings and alarms system for violators.He said NAB had established its first state of the Art Forensic Science LAB(FSL) in NAB Rawalpindi which has facilities of Digital Forensics,Questioned Documents and Fingerprint Analysis.
