NAB recovered Rs50bn, filed 150 references

ISLAMABAD: Chairman National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Qamar Zaman Chaudhry has stated that the organization had recovered Rs 50 billion and filed 150 references against the corrupt people.

Talking to media during his official visit to Vienna, Austria, he said corruption is just like a cancer and mother of all evils.    Therefore, we shall have to root out corruption with iron hands through a holistic and workable Anti-Corruption Strategy.

He said NAB's Anti-Corruption Strategy was appreciated globally as in Pakistan the Bureau during period of more than three years of present management has filed 150 corruption references in the respective Accountability Courts and received Rs. 50 billion from corrupt people and deposited in the national exchequer.

He said the NAB has also introduced a new System of Combine Investigation Team (CIT) to benefit from the experience and collective wisdom of senior supervisory officers. NAB's officers and officials are following strict Code of Conduct and SOPs and merit according to law.

Starting from the year 2014 which can be called basically a year of reinvigoration of NAB, he said, we have moved with new zeal and effort.

During the tenure of present management of NAB, the overall conviction ratio in respective accountability courts is about 76 per cent which is excellent as compared to any other anti-corruption agency.

He said that NAB has established its first Forensic Science Lab (FSL) at NAB Rawalpindi which has facilities of Digital Forensics, Questioned Documents and Fingerprint Analysis. This is a great achievement for Pakistan due to NAB efforts, he said. Besides Transparency International, the Independent watch dogs like World Economic Forum have also appreciated Pakistan's efforts to curb corruption in Pakistan.

Qamar Zaman Chaudhry said NAB in collaboration with HEC signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in 2014 and in a very short span of time established over 45, 000 Character Building Societies (CBSs) at universities, colleges and schools to create awareness against corruption.

He said the NAB has undertaken a number of strategic initiatives aimed at rejuvenation of the organization. The Organogram was revisited to transform NAB into an efficient and responsive organization.

NAB has devised a Quantifiable Grading System (QGS) to monitor the performance of all Regions of NAB on annual basis, he said. From 2015, under Quantifiable Grading System (QGS) NAB is monitoring the performance of all regional offices and NAB headquarter on annual basis to know the strengths and weaknesses of NAB regional Bureaus.

NAB has also introduced Mid Term Inspection of NAB HQ and all Regional Bureaus on the basis of feedback received from Annual Inspection, he added.

The Chairman said, NAB has introduced Internal Accountability Mechanism (IAM) and till to date out of 84 officers and officials, 23 officers have been imposed major penalty which is removal from service and 34 have been received minor penalties. "This is a record that any organization has initiated Accountability Process within its organization at its own."

He said eradication of corruption is top priority of NAB as in a bid to reach out to complainants, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has undertaken an initiative to make the bureau more citizens friendly.

"The Citizen Friendly NAB would help reach out to complainants and cater to their complaints in a more effective manner utilizing the existing Monitoring and Evaluation System (MES) to generate a complaint registration acknowledgement system," he added.