The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has recovered over Rs4.5 billion looted money in the last one year bringing the total recovery to date to Rs264.4 billion, said a press release issued here on Sunday.
NAB has decided to give priority to corruption cases ranging normally from Rs100 to 1,000 million and above. The NAB, established in 1999 with the responsibility of elimination of corruption through a holistic approach of awareness, prevention and enforcement, has chalked out a comprehensive National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACS) for eradication of corruption.
The allocation to NAB for its working since creation was 11.8 billion rupees, which was equivalent to only 4.4 per cent of recoveries made by it.
The numbers of applications received in 2014 were 40,077, double of what was received in 2013. The increase in applications reflected people’s confidence in the NAB.
In terms of inquiries, NAB has completed 585 inquiries during the year 2014 as compared to 243 during 2013.
Around 188 investigations were concluded in 2014 as compare to 129 in 2013. The references filed in respective Accountability Courts (AC), in 2014, NAB has filed 208 references as compared to 135 during 2013. The rate of success of NAB’s prosecution work in all courts is approximately 70%. The recent reports of Transparency International also rated Pakistan in Corruption Perception Index (CPI) from 175 to 126, which is a great achievement for Pakistan due to NAB’s efforts.
NAB has filed six references in the Rs 22 billion Mudaraba Scam and recovered Rs73 and I billion crore from Mudaraba scam besides properties and vehicles and arrested 32 accused in the case.
NAB has also filed eight references in Rental Power Project cases in the respective Accountability Courts.
A Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) has already been devised to rationalize the workload and timelines have been prescribed for efficient, effective and expeditious disposal of cases putting a maximum limit of 10 months- from complaint verification-to-inquiry-to-investigation and finally to a reference in the AC.
The SOP is reactivated to make these responsive to the needs of changed economic, social and technological realities along with goals and targets for smooth conduct of operational activities in accordance with Law and to bring further improvements in the performance of NAB Regional Bureaus.
NAB has developed Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) System catering complaint entry, complaint verification, inquiry, investigation, and prosecution stage and record preservation of Regional Board Meetings and Executive Board Meetings including case brief, decisions made and list of participants attended the meeting with time & date and setting up of an effective M&E System and ability to analyze data in qualitative and quantitative form having warnings and alarms system for violators.
