The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has released its four-year performance report under the leadership of Justice (r) Javed Iqbal.
Due to the outstanding performance, NAB is today the Chairman of NAB SAARC Anti-Corruption Forum, Pakistan’s focal body under the UN Convention against Corruption. World Economic Forum, Global Peace Canada, PILDAT, Mashal Pakistan has appreciated NAB’s efforts whereas as per Gilani & Gallup survey , 59 percent of people have expressed confidence in NAB. The National Accountability Bureau was established with the mandate to eradicate corruption and recover looted money from corrupt elements and deposit the recovered amount in national exchequer. Justice (r) Javed Iqbal, after assuming his responsibilities as Chairman NAB devised a comprehensive and effective three-pronged anti-corruption strategy of ‘awareness, prevention and enforcement’ to weed out corruption which has been identified as the most effective anti-corruption strategy. The Chairman of the National Accountability Bureau, while introducing many new reforms in the institution, expanded the scope of the National Accountability Bureau to all corners of the country. Headquartered in Islamabad, NAB has 7 regional offices which are functioning in Karachi, Lahore, Quetta, Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Sukkur, Multan while one sub-office in working in Gilgit-Baltistan.
The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has become an active institute as it has recovered around Rs 539 billion from corrupt elements directly and indirectly in the last more than four years which is a significant achievement as comparing to previous years. NAB since its inception has received a total of 501,729 complaints since its inception out of which 498,256 had been disposed of.
NAB has authorised 16,307 complaint verifications as per law, out of which investigation of 15,475 complaints has been completed. NAB has initiated 10,365 inquiries as per law out of which 9,299 have been completed. The NAB has authorised 4,707 investigations out of which 4,377 have been completed. NAB has filed as many as 3,776 references in various accountability courts. Right now some 1,237 corruption references of Rs 1,353 billion were being heard in various esteemed accountability courts of the country. The NAB has decided to file petitions in accordance with the law in the esteemed accountability courts for speedy hearing of pending cases where the law will make its own way.
According to NAB’s enforcement strategy, the NAB, headed by its chairman Justice Javed Iqbal, set a time limit of 10 months to complete the investigation.NAB has also introduced a new concept of Combine Investigation Team (CIT) in order to benefit from the experience and collective wisdom of senior supervisory officers, hence a system of CIT comprising of a director, additional director, investigation officer and a senior legal counsel has been put in place. This is not only lending quality to the work but also ensuring to improve the quality of inquiries and investigations.The positive results of all those initiatives has already started to come. NAB does not belong to any political party, group or individual but NAB belongs to the state of Pakistan only. According to NAB law, the policy of accountability for all is being strictly followed. In last more than four years period, the NAB has summoned those big fish that no one could have imagined even serving call up notice to them in past.
