ISLAMABAD: Chairman National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Justice (Retd) Javed Iqbal Wednesday reiterated anti graft watchdog’s commitment to nab the corrupt elements and deal the mega corruption white collar crime cases sternly with zero tolerance.
In a statement, he said NAB’s faith was corruption free Pakistan which was in line with its national anti corruption strategy of Awareness, Prevention and Enforcement.
The bureau is the focal organization of Pakistan under United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) as Pakistan is signatory of UNCAC. While World Economic Forum, Transparency International Pakistan, PILDAT and Mishal Pakistan have lauded NAB’s performance in eradication of corruption.
NAB’s Operation, Prosecution, Human Resource Development, Training, Research, Awareness and Prevention have been rejuvenated in order to further improve their performance.
The chairman said that NAB’s prime focus was on corruption and corrupt practices including money laundering, misuse of authority, cases of cheating the public at large, bank frauds, willful bank loan defaults and embezzlement of state funds etc.
He said that the overall complaints in 2019 were 53,643 and processed 42,760 whereas complaints in 2018 were 48,591 and processed 41,414. Increase in the number of complaints also reflects enhanced public trust in the NAB.
NAB during 2019, processed 1,308 complaint verification, 1,686 inquiries and 609 investigations and recovered Rs 141.542 billion from corrupt elements in 2019 and NAB’s accumulative success ratio is about 68.8 percent which is a remarkable achievement in investigation of White Collar Crimes in the world.
NAB has recovered Rs 466.069 billion from corrupt elements since its inception and deposited in national exchequer.
He said that NAB had introduced a new concept of Combine Investigation Team (CIT) in order to benefit from the experience and collective wisdom of senior supervisory officers, a system of CIT comprising of Director, Additional Director, Investigation Officer, Legal Counsel, financial and land revenue experts has been put in place besides establishing its own state of the art Forensic Science Laboratory in NAB Rawalpindi which has facilities of Digital Forensics, Questioned Documents and Fingerprint Analysis.
In 2019, 15,747 questioned documents and 300 thumb impressions were analyzed in 50 cases and forensic analysis was carried out on 74 digital devices (Laptops, Mobile phones, Hard Disks etc).
He said that Pakistan’s apex Anti Corruption Agency, NAB was the only Organization in the world with whom China had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to oversee projects to be undertaken under China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in Pakistan.
The signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Pakistan and China is especially significant in the backdrop of increasing economic and trade cooperation between Pakistan and China with the resolve by both the Governments to work in a fair, impartial and corruption free environment in order to share their experiences to eradicate corruption.
He directed all DGs of NAB Regional Bureaus to conduct all complaint verification, inquiries and investigations on the basis of solid evidence.
