ISLAMABAD: With Pakistan, a signatory of the United Nation’s Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has been complying with its obligations under the international charter.
This was stated by NAB Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry during a meeting with Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, the president of the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT), who had called on the bureau’s chief at NAB Headquarters, a statement released on Thursday said.
Chaudhry said that NAB accords high value to its interaction with organisations such as PILDAT.
“We at NAB feel that such interaction with a reputed organisation will bring an idea to take one’s work even higher,” Chaudhry said.
Reiterating that corruption is the mother of all evils, the NAB chief said that they were committed to eradicating corruption in all its manifestations.
Talking about the UNCAC, Chaudhry said that NAB was the focal department for implementing the convention.
During the meeting, NAB’s operation division gave a detailed presentation on Pakistan’s compliance to UNCAC. Pakistan had signed the convention in 2003 and ratified it four years later in 2007. It became a state party to the convention along with 154 other states.
Under the UNCAC, Chaudhry said that the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) conducts country reviews of countries to enhance their legal framework with regards to international and transnational corruption as well as designing, sharing and enhancing tools of mutual assistance for technical assistance, fast track sharing of information and asset recovery.
With NAB being the focal agency in Pakistan, it had conducted the country review of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
With country reviews a mandatory requirement under the UNCAC, a peer-review system has been devised to assess implementation status. Under the system, experts from any two countries (selected through balloting) review anti-corruption laws, mechanisms and procedures of the country under review.
Pakistan’s country review was conducted by reviewing experts from Norway and the Solomon Islands along with UNODC experts and facilitators in September 2015.
All the local governmental experts including focal persons of 10 federal and provincial ministries, departments and agencies had participated in the discussions. After the country visit, a meeting was held at the NAB Headquarters on November 30, 2015, as a follow-up on the review.
