ISLAMABAD: Ad hocism at the most important region of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) is threatening to affect the investigation into around 600 high profile corruption cases being probed by the Rawalpindi branch of the anti-corruption watchdog. According to sources, all senior positions in the NAB Rawalpindi have fallen vacant as it is already functioning without a regular Director General (DG) for the last several weeks despite the fact that it is probing high profile graft cases including multi-billion Ogra scam, modarba scandal and rental power project case. There are four posts of Directors in NAB Rawalpindi and all have fallen vacant on Monday after transfer of senior officers to other regions.The Bureau is already facing strong criticism from around 40,000 victims of Rs22-billion modarba scam for its failure to recover the looted money and the sources said the absence of senior officers at top is likely to further delay the investigation into the mega scam. Similarly the cases related to corruption rental power projects during previous tenure of PPP government and multi billion Ogra corruption cases are also being hit by the lack of leadership. The Director General NAB Rawalpindi Col (R) Shahzad Anwar Bhatti retired on 31 December 2014 but so far no replacement has been announced by the Bureau. Director NAB Rawalpindi Sqn Ldr (R) Tariq Nadeem had been looking after the post for last three weeks but he too has been transferred to Multan on Monday. There are four wings in NAB Rawalpindi namely: Investigation Wing, Investigation Wing 1, Financial Crimes Investigation Wing (FCIW) and Awareness and Prevention Wing, but none is currently being headed by a regular director. While confirming the vacancies, a spokesman of NAB Asim Ali Nawazish said: “The absence of regular officers cannot affect the performance of NAB Rawalpindi as the region can function without senior officers.” He claimed that around 100 investigation officers are already working on all the cases and no inquiry or investigation is being delayed as the result of vacancies at top level. The spokesman expressed satisfaction over the pace of Modarba scam saying that 26 suspects has so far been arrested in the case and an amount of Rs1.87 billion has been recovered out of a total amount of Rs22 billion. Nawazish said some senior NAB officials are currently undergoing training and the Bureau is waiting for their return to fill the vacant posts. However sources said some of the officers on training are facing court cases as their appointment and promotion has been challenged in the Islamabad High Court (IHC). They added that there are non-controversial senior officers working in NAB who can be appointed on vacant posts instead of running the bureau on ad hoc basis.
