ISLAMABAD: Justice Javed Iqbal, Chairman National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has said that NAB strongly believes in “Zero Corruption, 100% Development”. NAB absolutely committed to root out corruption with iron hands in an atmosphere of renewed energy and dynamism, where fight against corruption is being taken as national duty. He said these remarks while chairing a meeting of NAB DGs via video link at NAB Headquarters by maintaining social distancing and ensuring all precautionary measures and said that our Father of the Nation Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah in his address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan had termed “One of the biggest curses… is corruption and bribery. That really is a poison. We must put it down with an iron hand”.
Chairman NAB said that the National Accountability Bureau was established to eradicate corruption in a holistic and integrated manner. This is the backdrop against with NAB is seriously working to accomplish its mission i.e. to rid the nation from corruption and corrupt practices and make Pakistan corruption free. He said that NAB’s operational methodology has set three stages for proceeding of cases: complaint verification, inquiry and investigation.
NAB’s officers/officials need to follow Anti Corruption Strategy by Adopting “Accountability for All” policy against eradication of corruption. He said that the hard work, commitment, transparency and merit being put in by NAB officers are being appreciated by national and international reputed organizations. He said that NAB officers should doubling their efforts in nabbing corrupt elements and recover from them hard earned looted money of the innocent citizens of Pakistan.
He said that through detailed introspection and analysis of organizational weaknesses, overhaul of procedures, all pillars of the organization i.e. Operations, Prosecution, Human Resource Development and Awareness and Prevention.
He said that to close the possibility of any single NAB officer/official influencing the discharge of official business, the new concept of a “Combined Investigation Team” (CIT) was introduced where two investigation officers and a legal consultant, financial expert under the supervision of Additional Director/Case and concerned Director are working as a team for a fair, transparent and unbiased, inquiry/ investigations.
He said that the quality of inquiry and investigation of NAB must have further improve due to establishment of NAB’s first Forensic Science Lab (FSL) in Islamabad which has all facilities of Digital Forensics, Questioned Documents and Fingerprint Analysis which will help is lending quality and solid evidence in conduct of inquiries and investigations.
He said that NAB has devised Monitoring & Evaluation System (MES) in order to monitor NAB performance of NAB and all Regional Bureaus in qualitative and quantitative term which has proved very helpful in evaluation of overall performance of NAB. He said that NAB is the only Organization with whom China has signed MoU to oversee projects being undertaken under CEPC.
He said that NAB Ordinance 1999’s preamble emphasizes to nab corrupt and recover looted money. Due to this reason, NAB has recovered Rs. 328 billion since its inception and its overall conviction ration is about 86.8 percent. He said that NAB hopes that joint efforts of all stakeholders can collaborate to check corruption before happening with the help of all stakeholders.
