National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry has said that an effective anti-corruption strategy yielded results in 2015 and it will be continue in 2016.
The NAB chairman said that it was encouraging that for the first time the anti-corruption has been made a part of development agenda in Pakistan in the context of governance.
“The planning commission of Pakistan has included a chapter devoted to issues of corruption in the 11th five year plan and we intend to work closely with the commission to achieve the goals,” the NAB chairman said, according to a press release issued here on Saturday.
The NAB prosecuted corrupt elopements and recovered over Rs4.5 billion looted money during the last one year bringing the total recovery to date to Rs265.12 billion.
Last year, the NAB filed 12 references in the Rs22 billion Modarba scam and recovered over Rs1billion from the accused involved in the scam. NAB also arrested 33 accused in the case. During the last year, the NAB also filed nine references in the rental power project case in respective accountability courts.
On the directives of the NAB chairman, 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 accountability court.
The NAB has also put in place an internal accountability mechanism to encourage the culture of adherence to rules and SOPs as a deterrence against violations and to weed out corrupt elements for misconduct, malpractice and violation of laid down rules.
The NAB has also developed Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) System for maintaining record of data regarding complaint entry, complaint verification, inquiry, investigation, 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 for analysing data in qualitative and quantitative for having warnings and alarms system for violators.
The NAB has also proposed to the Ministry of Law and Justice to enact a law protecting whistle-blower under the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), of which Pakistan is signatory. The law ministry has sent a summary to the prime minister who has approved the proposal which has further been sent to cabinet division to be placed before the Federal Cabinet for further necessary action. The NAB also plans to set up an Anti-Corruption Academy in Islamabad for capacity building of NAB officials.