Isaf containers, Railways and Ogra: NAB initiates probe into mega corruption cases

The National Accountability Bureau on Wednesday started conducting inquiries and investigation on the order of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, against highly significant cases of corruption, which included corruption in the affairs of Pakistan Railways, Isaf missing containers involving colossal and huge loss of duties/taxes worth billions of rupees and corruption/misuse of authority in Ogra subsequent to the appointment of its last Chairman.
Proceedings in all these cases have been initiated under the provisions of National Accountability Ordinance 1999 and significant progress has been made on some important aspects including recoveries in Pakistan Railways. In the scrap case, Railway officials and contractor are under the custody of NAB out of which contractor has agreed to voluntary return of Rs. 47 million as a difference for the scrap lifted so far from Railways and another Rs. 240 million more as a difference in addition to the amount already agreed for the material/scrap to be collected by him.
Negotiations are going on with Royal Palm Golf Club and its management has agreed to pay a substantial amount as increase to Railway authorities annually. Inquiry about the purchase of spares for Chinese locomotives is at the final stage, which in fact was the major cause for halting the Railway operations.
The Bureau is also conducting important matters of Bank of Punjab as per the directives of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. In this case NAB has so far recovered more than Rs 5 billion from the accused persons out of the defrauded amount of Rs. 9 billion and the process of further recovery is under way.
As per the judgement of the apex court about revival of NRO cases, all the terminated cases were revived and are being pursued in accordance with law. In this respect more than 100 weekly progress reports have been submitted on revived NRO cases before the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
The matters pertaining to grievances of the general public and referred by the Court for redressal are being given due priority and compliance reports are being regularly submitted to the apex court. This shows the commitment of the Bureau towards its obligations on matters particularly entrusted by the Supreme Court.-PR