It is a moot point if lopsided plea bargains deter or actually encourage corruption
In May this year, Mushtaq Raisani, then Finance Secretary, Balochistan, was taken into custody by the country’s anti-graft body, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), following the recovery of astronomical sum of Rs. 730 million in hard cash and gold from his Quetta residence. In the absence of a piratical treasure map, the dogged investigators followed the trail and found out that he was also the proud owner of twelve houses in Karachi, meaning that his ill-gotten assets aggregating a little over Rs. three billion were identified.
Now comes the mind-boggling part. The Executive Board Meeting (EBM) of NAB during the course of inquiry had itself calculated the estimated looted wealth of this bureaucratic robber baron at a massive Rs. 40 billion. But on Wednesday, the selfsame EBM, under the chairmanship of its chief, Qamar Zaman Chaudhry, accepted Raisani’s plea bargain offer of Rs. 2 billion under Section 25 of the NAB Ordinance, instead of following its usual practice of recovering the entire looted amount in such cases. Since the ignoble practice of NAB officials taking their own cut in these plea bargains has reportedly been discontinued, one fails to understand the hurry in accepting this relatively paltry amount when compared to the actual NAB calculated corruption amount of Rs.40 billion, and the so far identified assets of over Rs. three billion. Does this imply that the NAB would refund the amount over and above the agreed upon Rs. 2 billion to the accused, who had laid his paws on the development funds of his backward province? It defies all reason and common sense, and the minor conditions attached to the Raisani deal, no government job, no bank loan for 10 years, seem ridiculous under the circumstances.
The apex Court needs to follow up its earlier suo moto notice on plea bargains with a restraining order on the NAB chairman’s powers. This remedy invented by NAB to combat corruption seems worse than the evil it was intended to cure.