LAHORE: The master’s degree of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Lahore Director General Shahzad Saleem was authenticated by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) on Saturday.
The NAB Lahore DG’s degree was sent to HEC for authentication on December 24, according to the NAB spokesperson, adding that the HEC has verified that Saleem earned a ‘100 per cent genuine’ degree from the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) campus of Al-Khair University in 2002.
Last month, the Supreme Court delisted a case about the alleged fake degree of the NAB Lahore’s chief filed by a local journalist. The matter of Saleem’s degree was brought up in the apex court last year during hearing of a suo motu case related to illegal appointments in the top anti-graft watchdog.
The top court had announced taking up the case after the NAB Lahore DG made controversial appearances at TV shows in which he discussed the ongoing cases against Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Shehbaz Sharif in November.
The PML-N had taken a strong exception to the DG’s claims and submitted in the National Assembly a privileged motion against what it called the ‘media trial’ of lawmakers by an official who takes salary from the government.
The journalist had claimed that the 2002 transcript of Saleem’s master’s degree was in the Calibri font which was not commercially available until five years later. After an internal probe, NAB had declared Saleem’s degree genuine and cleared him of any wrongdoing. However, the Lahore headquarter of the corruption watchdog requested the HEC to verify the degree in a letter written on December 24.
Last month, the NAB Lahore chief had told host of a TV talk show that the reporter who broke the story regarding his degree had already apologised to him upon being proven wrong. Minutes later, the reporter in the same show rejected his claim and said he stood by his story and had not apologised to the NAB official.
