ISLAMABAD, Dec 19 (APP): Chairman National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Qamar Zaman Chaudhry said father of the nation Quaid-e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah in his address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan had termed bribery and corruption as “One of the biggest curses and we must put it down with an iron hand”.
NAB is committed to come up to the expectations of the nation for
a corruption free Pakistan, he said in a press release issued here Sunday.
He said NAB was essentially a complaint driven organization
which was established to eradicate corruption and recover looted money from the corrupt.
NAB had chalked out a comprehensive operational methodology for
proceeding of cases, complaint verification, inquiry and investigation, he said.
The Chairman said NAB’s investigation officers strictly
follow Code of Conduct and zero tolerance policy on the basis of
evidence as per law.
He said to close the possibility of any single NAB
officer/official influencing the discharge of official business, the
concept of a “Combined Investigation Team” (CIT) was introduced
where two investigation officers and a legal consultant were working
as a team for a fair, transparent and unbiased inquiry/investigation.
He said NAB had recovered Rs. 280 billion since its
inception. NAB had received 326,694 complaints which were all
disposed off according to law.
The Chairman said NAB had authorized 10992 compliant
verifications, 7303 inquiries, 3648 investigation and filed 2667 in
the respective Accountability Courts to proceed against allegedly
corrupt people since its inception.
Due to this reason, Transparency International had rated
Pakistan in 2014 from 175 to 126 and in 2015 from 126 to 117. This
was because of an effective Anti Corruption Strategy of NAB which had
started yielding dividends.
Similarly PILDAT, World Economic Forum and Mishal Pakistan
had rated reduction in Pakistan’s Corruption Perception Index.
He said the figures of complaints, inquiries and
investigations were almost double as compared to the same period of
2014 to 2015 and in the six months of 2016.
The comparative figures for the latest two and a half year were
indicative of the hard work being put in by all ranks of NAB staff
in an atmosphere of renewed energy and dynamism, where fight against corruption was being taken as a national duty.
NAB with improved infrastructure and rationalized workload,
timelines had been prescribed for efficient, effective and
expeditious disposal of case putting a maximum limit of 10 months-
from complaint verification-to-inquiry-to investigation and finally
to a reference in Accountability Court, he added.
