The Senate Sub-Committee on Finance on Wednesday gave a two-week deadline to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to investigate into embezzlement worth Rs 950 million in a transaction from NIPL.
Chairing the meeting, committee convener Haroon Akhtar directed NAB to present a written report of the embezzled money trail until March 8. He expressed dissatisfaction over NAB’s performance and questioned why the bureau failed in three years to play a tangible role to investigate the case, as it recovered nothing so far, which was very unfortunate. “I want action now.
I want National Accountability Bureau to identify where the embezzled money has gone. Why the assets of Nadeem H Sheikh, the then CEO aren’t frozen so far? When NAB can arrest people from their homes then why it cannot manage to recover the embezzled money,” Haroon said.
Committee member Senator Haji Adeel said that National Accountability Bureau could arrest the prime minister and chief minister but could not do anything against culprits. National Accountability Bureau Director Toheedul Hassan informed the committee that after the committee’s instructions, the NAB chairman ordered the NAB Khyber Pakhtunkhwa DG to re-activate the investigation.
He informed the committee that after receiving eight complaints of irregularities against the embezzled money, investigation was started on May 15, 2009 at the headquarter-level but after one year it was shifted to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which was later halted because of a stay order of the Sindh High Court.
