NAB chairman on farewell visits reaches Peshawar

PESHAWAR: National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry has said that China has signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the NAB to streamline cooperation in the field of anti-corruption and oversee projects to be undertaken under CEPC.

“NAB is committed to rooting out corruption and recover looted money from the corrupt,” the NAB chairman said in his address at a function arranged for him during his farewell visit to NAB KP on Friday.

“Corruption is mother of all evils and that NAB is committed to eradicating the menace from the country by using all resources,” he went on to add.

He said corruption not only caused delays in the early completion of development projects but also caused huge losses to national exchequer.

The outgoing NAB chairman said that increase in the number of complaints also reflects enhanced public trust in the NAB.

He cited a PILDAT report to support his claim that stated that 42 percent people trusted NAB against 30 percent for police and 29 percent for other government officials.

Qamar Zaman Chaudhry said the recent report of Transparency International also rated Pakistan in Corruption Perception Index (CPI) from 175 to 116, which is a great achievement for Pakistan.

The World Economic Forum in its report of 2016 said that Pakistan’s corruption Perception Index has decreased from 126 to 122.

He said that NAB had perfected its procedures after adopting various initiatives during the tenure of the present management that have started yielding results.

About the performance of the NAB during the last three years, he said, the Bureau recovered Rs 50 billion from corrupt and deposited in the national exchequer.

He said that the figures of complaints, inquiries and investigations are almost double as compared to the same period of 2014, 2015 to 2017 which indicated hard work, dedication, professionalism by NAB staff.

The main purpose of NAB’s Awareness and Prevention campaign is to create Awareness against the ill effects of corruption among the citizen of Pakistan, he said. The NAB hosted first meeting of heads of SAARC anti-corruption authorities in which all SAARC countries selected NAB as its first Chair which is great achievement for Pakistan, he added.

He said that the NAB had established its first Forensic Science Lab (FSL) which has facilities of Digital Forensics, Questioned Documents and Fingerprint Analysis.

Qamar Zaman Chaudhry said that the NAB had rationalised its workload and timelines have been prescribed for efficient, effective and expeditious disposal of cases putting a maximum limit of 10 months.

NAB has also introduced a new System of Combine Investigation Team (CIT) in order to benefit from the experience and collective wisdom of senior supervisory officers, a system of CIT comprising of Director, Additional Director, Investigation Officer and a Senior Legal Counsel has been put in place.