Chairman NAB Justice Javed Iqbal, on Friday expressed satisfaction over the performance of the bureau and said NAB has great regard for the business community as the business community plays a vital role in the prosperity and development of the country.
NAB chief said the anti-graft watchdog is a people friendly institution.
The Chairman NAB expressed this while chairing a high level meeting of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to review the overall performance of NAB at its Headquarters. The meeting was attended by Deputy Chairman NAB, Prosecutor General Accountability, Director General Operations and senior officials of NAB.
The meeting was informed from 1,269 corruption cases, the bureau has recovered Rs. 790 billion directly or indirectly from corrupt elements since bureau’s inception, which is more recovery as compared to other such anti-corruption institutions.
Expressing satisfaction over the performance of the bureau, chairman NAB directed all regional bureaus of NAB to utilise all available resources to take mega corruption white collar crime cases to logical conclusion. He said out of 179 mega corruption cases 63 cases concluded by various accountability courts due to vigorous prosecution of the Bureau whereas 95 mega corruption cases are still under trial in different accountability courts.
NAB received 15,871 complaints in 2020, approved conducting 1,681 complaint verifications, 1,326 inquiries and 496 investigations and recovered record Rs 321.4829 billion directly or indirectly from corrupt elements during the year 2020, the meeting was told. The bureau has received 487,964 complaints, conducted 15,930 complaint verifications, 10,041 inquiries, 4,598 investigations since inception while 3,682 references were also filed during the aforementioned period.
The meeting was told that NAB has introduced a Combine Investigation Team (CIT) system in order to benefit from the experienced and collective wisdom of senior supervisory officers so that quality and standard of investigations could be further improved on the basis of solid evidence. This helped improve performance. NAB has paid attention to imparting training among prosecution and investigation officers.
The Chairman, while praising the performance of the NAB said NAB has become a role model for Saarc countries in eradication of corruption as Pakistan has become the first chairman of Saarc Anti-Corruption Forum which is a great achievement for Pakistan due to NAB. NAB is the focal organisation of Pakistan under the United National Convention against Corruption (UNCAC).
Pakistan is the only country to which China has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for eradication of corruption. Pakistan and China are jointly working for ensuring transparency in China Pakistan economic coordination CPEC projects, claimed Chairman NAB.
