Resuming the hearing of third fortnightly progress report of missing Nato containers, Supreme Court Wednesday asked National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to produce all the details pertaining to issuance of Cross Border Certificates (CBCs) by Thursday (today).
Submitting its progress report pertaining to billion of rupees loss to the national exchequer due to missing Nato containers, the NAB authorities told the bench that a committee of Chairman Federal Board of Revenue, Chairman NAB and other concerned officials had been formed to devise a strategy to work out ways and means to recover billions of rupees from those involved in the missing Nato containers scam.
Admonishing the NAB authorities over a three-month late submission of the report, a two-member bench of Justices Jawwad S Khawaja and Khilji Arif Hussain observed that it was required to be determined who caused over Rs 50 billion loss to the national kitty.
Seeking more time, the NAB authorities pleaded that in order to check the status of a total of 112000 CBCs which were issued manually, four more months' time was required. To this, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain categorically said that the NAB could be given more time but there would be a condition that during the granted time it would recover the entire embezzled money with interest.
Justice Khilji Arif Hussain observed that had the huge sum of Rs 50 billion been spent on education sector, every child of the country would have been literate. Recalling the embezzlement in Iqra surcharge, Justice Jawwad S Khawaja said the tax was levied for the development of education sector in the country but nobody knew where the amount collected under the head of Iqra surcharge was spent.
Arguing for the containers owners, Advocate Qazi Anwar raised objection over the investigation of NAB in the matter saying that the Bureau had not provided record to FBR so far. He further contended that the NAB failed to determine the loss correctly. Anwar further told the court that American specialists in Afghanistan had also rejected the then Chairman's concerns relating to monetary loss due to missing Nato containers.
The counsel for FBR, Raja Irshad told the bench that the national exchequer had incurred a loss of Rs 53 billion according to report of FBR. As far as NAB's report was concerned, it was a Rs 69 billion loss. Later, the hearing of case was adjourned till Thursday (today).
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