NAB cases

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) as directed by the Supreme Court submitted a report highlighting extremely disturbing facts on 150 major scams with severe financial implications on the exchequer. Seventy-one of these cases are in the inquiry stage, 41 are under investigation and references have been filed in the remaining 38 cases. The court has legitimately asked NAB to reveal when the cases were initiated and for how long were they still being investigated or pending in the accountability courts?
NAB does not operate like the police in registering a first instance report. Instead under the law it initiates an investigation to determine whether there is enough evidence prima facie to proceed to the next stage of the process which entails the Chairman NAB directing his staff to begin an in-depth investigation - the only individual empowered to do so. If the evidence is damning then NAB files a reference. However, some of the 150 cases implicating those holding (or having held) the highest offices in the land including Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, his brother Shahbaz Sharif, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, former President Asif Ali Zardari, former prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani are very well known and date back more than a decade raising questions about the distinct possibility of pervasive political influence on NAB that accounts for thwarting the pace of its investigations.
To regurgitate the 1990s mantra that cases against the PML-N/PPP leadership were politically motivated, a stance taken by the Minister of Information Pervez Rashid as well as former President Zardari's spokesman Farhatullah Babar based on the fact that NAB was established during the rule of military dictator Musharraf in 1999, no longer eases public concerns for two reasons. First and foremost, Musharraf was ousted from power in 2008 - or more than seven years ago - a period during which the PPP was in power for five years and the PML-N for the remaining two. Surely these two parties could have energized NAB to proceed to undertake timely and necessary actions namely to close those cases that were still in the stage of initial investigation as well as those where sufficient proof was not available even after the passage of more than a decade since the inquiry was initiated.
And secondly, the general public appears to quite easily accept the charge that NAB chairmen have been carefully selected by the heads of government since it was established to ensure that its investigation does not proceed in an unbiased manner against all those charged with heinous financial crimes. Or in other words, NAB was used for the purpose of gaining political leverage by the military dictator and unfortunately continues to be so used by the two subsequent civilian governments. Neither the PPP nor the PML-N has yet directed NAB to proceed with cases that could have had political implications for them.
What unfortunately has flabbergasted the Pakistani people is the fact that NAB itself has become implicated in corruption by being in cahoots with those that it was investigating through the plea bargaining process. Around 70 percent of cases over a 16-year period were resolved through plea bargaining which was on occasion less than 20 to 30 percent of the amount scammed and even that amount was not fully cleared with just one or two instalments made.
Given the reported scale of corruption inclusive of abuse of power the 150 cases would probably not be earth-shattering for the people of this country but what has astounded the nation is the fact that an entity established for the purpose of rooting out corruption at the taxpayers' expense has itself become mired in corruption through the plea bargaining. It is unfortunate that in Pakistan, once an entity accesses a mode of making money illegally, it is not willing to easily abandon that practice thus accountability of NAB itself is required on an emergent basis. Making NAB a credible anti-corruption entity would imply appointing a dedicated chairman of integrity who has the backbone to take the government itself to court if he is unduly pressured to take decisions that are politically motivated.