NAB tough on govt servants, soft on ex-armymen

Contrary to the general impression that politicians were prime targets of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in former president Pervez Musharraf’s regime, the special audit report on NAB reveals that government servants, particularly those below BPS-20, were the bread and butter of the watch dog with 61 percent of the complaints against them processed, and former army officers were the safest, with only 0.7 percent of the complaints against them processed by the bureau.
The special audit report says further that NAB’s operations did not contribute to significant reduction in corruption and promotion of good governance. “During nine years of NAB’s operations from 1999 to 2008, the level of corruption in Pakistan is said to have persisted,” says the report. Audit officials have noted that more than one-third of the cases processed in NAB either ended up in acquittals or withdrawn at the court level, which marred the effectiveness of the bureau. The report points out that the total cases filed by NAB in eight years stood at 1,495, out of which decided cases were 818 (54.7 percent) while 677 (45.3 percent) of the cases were under progress. The report further reveals that out of the decided cases, 22.1 percent were acquitted while 16.7 percent were withdrawn.
The report further reveals that NAB failed to catch the “big fish”.
“NAB’s stated policy during its early years was ‘Big Fish First’. This implied that corruption in high places was more material, and the menace can be tackled effectively by eliminating corruption in higher echelons of government. However, analysis of data provided by NAB indicated that NAB moved against a very limited number of accused and its focus in practice was on holding lower and middle ranking officials accountable,” says the report. Justifying its claims, the report says that from November 1999 to October 2008, NAB processed complaints against 28,717 government servants (61 percent), 3,658 businessmen (3.7 percent), 1,169 politicians (2.4 percent), 375 former armed forces officers (0.7 percent), and 13,105 others (27.8 percent), amounting to a total of 47,083 cases.
The report states that in an overview of 3360 cases against government servants handled by NAB, 137 cases (4 percent) were registered against civil servants of BPS-21 and 22, 1,853 cases (55.1 percent) were registered against civil servants of BPS 17 to 20, while cases registered against civil servants of BPS-16 and below stood at 1,370 (40.8 percent). According to the report, a total of 208 cases were registered against ministers and above, 117 cases were registered against parliamentarians and 125 against other politicians. “Total enquiries conducted against ministers and above are 26, parliamentarians 23 and other politicians 94. Total investigations conducted against ministers and above are 182, parliamentarians 94 and other politicians 31.