ISLAMABAD - The Supreme Court on Monday held that the National Accountability Bureau has become a facilitator of the corrupt elements in the country.
The court maintained that the Bureau’s voluntary return law was wrong and the anti-graft body has been reduced to a ‘recovery department’.
Hearing a suo motu case, Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed remarked it seemed the NAB had become a department only for the recovery of embezzled money. He said a voluntary return deal was, in fact, like accepting a crime. “A year back, we had stated that the NAB’s law of voluntary return was not right,” he added.
Justice Azmat said the Bureau is ridiculing the law as a ‘corruption facilitator’ because the man who is charged with corruption of Rs.250 is imprisoned compared with the other who enjoys plea bargain and voluntarily returns Rs.2.5 billion and secures his release. “Why does the NAB not get a ‘Corruption Kar Lo Aur Kara Lo’ advertisement published in newspapers?” he added.
Justice Amir Hani Muslim said the people had reservations about the NAB’s plea-bargain law. He noted: “In some cases, voluntary return is worse than plea bargain as the NAB acquits the accused after taking money.” He asked if the laws of NAB, FIA and Anti-Corruption Establishment were the same or not.
Justice Azmat said the purpose of voluntary return was something else, but now the NAB itself was writing letters to the accused to benefit from it. He said the NAB should give advertisements in newspapers, asking the accused to benefit from voluntary return facility.
The attorney general told the bench that the NAB had written letters addressing the electricity defaulters. On this, Justice Hani remarked that with the speed the things are moving, the campaign it appears will take several more months.
NAB Prosecutor General Waqas Qadeer Dar said the government had written a letter to the NAB for taking action against defaulters of electricity bills. He explained the NAB did not make the voluntary return law and they were using the provision in accordance with the National Accountability Ordinance, 1999.
He said when the NAB officials arrested former Balochistan finance secretary Mushtaq Raisani, an uproar was created in the media and it was reported that Rs 40 billion were recovered from his home whereas total budget of the province was not more than Rs 40 billion.
The NAB official further said that in many cases the NAB had accepted voluntary return on the orders of courts. Justice Hani asked him why the NAB had not challenged those orders.
Earlier, Attorney General of Pakistan Ashtar Ausaf said the issues of plea bargain and voluntary return were under consideration in the Senate. “Let the Senate and the National Assembly do their job,” Justice Hani said and asked Ashtar Ausaf to tell the court about the government’s stance on plea bargain and voluntary return. The attorney general sought time to do the needful.
The case was adjourned for two weeks.
Meanwhile, the Senate Standing Committee on Law and Justice observed the NAB law was being used for political victimisation and that there should be no sacred cow if the law was to be reviewed.
NAB representatives briefed the committee about the issue of plea bargain and voluntary return. It was informed that plea bargain was not new in criminal proceedings; the concept existed in different accountability and prosecution systems of the world, they said and added Rs 37.12 billion had been recovered so far through plea bargain and voluntary return from 4,565 accused.
Law and Justice Minister Zahid Hamid said a joint committee of the parliament, comprising members of the Senate and National Assembly, has been constituted, which would review all the NAB laws, including Section 25. The committee deferred further discussion on the matter.