LAHORE: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has recovered Rs50.407 million from corrupt people since January 2017, taking the total recovered amount since its inception to Rs58.16 billion.
A spokesman for the Lahore NAB said the recovered amount has been deposited in the national kitty and reimbursed to the affected people. NAB Lahore Director General Shahzad Saleem said the regional bureau had exposed numerous mega corruption cases since its inception in 1999. He said the bureau arrested 1,161 culprits, including bureaucrats, businessmen, real estate agents, police officials and government and non-government personnel.
The director general said that 85 criminals had been arrested since he assumed charge of as head of the Lahore Region in April 2017. This is a record made by the NAB Lahore in just four months. As many as 126 arrests were made in 2016.
He said that NAB Lahore had received 48,437 complaints since 1999 and 47,907 of them had been disposed off till now. At least 3,331 complaint verifications were authorized, 3,208 of them were disposed off and 659 were referred to other departments. Furthermore, 2,099 inquiries have been authorised since inception of the bureau, 1,951 of them have been disposed off and 148 are under process. Total authorised investigations are 1,225, 1,139 investigations have been disposed off so far and 86 are under process.
The NAB Lahore director general says the Lahore Region has filed 1,019 corruption references cases in accountability courts since its inception. The courts have decided 646 references. The NAB Lahore’s overall conviction rate is 76 percent.
The spokesman said that National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry had chalked out a comprehensive National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACS). Under NACS, the NAB adopted ‘Zero Tolerance Policy’ and a proactive approach to curb corruption and corrupt practices. In pursuance of chairman’s vision, the NAB Lahore is striving hard to eliminate corruption from the society, he said.
