ISLAMABAD - Chairman National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Justice (r) Javed Iqbal yesterday chaired a high-level meeting to review the overall performance of NAB.

Speaking on the occasion, he said that the top most priority of NAB is to eradicate the menace of corruption, money laundering, misuse of authority and taking the mega corruption white collar crime cases to their logical conclusion as per law. The chairman said that all resources are being utilized to achieve the targets of zero corruption and 100 percent development. He reiterated that NAB has no affiliation with any political party, individual or political party but its only affiliation is with the state of Pakistan. 

He said the anti-corruption policy devised by NAB is to purge the country from corruption and corrupt practices which has started yielding excellent results as it has duly acknowledged by 59 percent people of the country as reflected in the recent survey of Gillani and Gallup. Justice ® Javed Iqbal said NAB is a focal organization of the UN convention against corruption and is considered the role model in anti-graft institutions of SAARC countries, which isan honour for Pakistan due to NAB’s efforts.

The Chairman further said that NAB itself has prescribed timeframe of 10 months for conclusion of complaint verifications, inquiries, and investigations, besides constituting Combined Investigation Teams (CIT) for benefitting from the collective wisdom of senior officers which is a lending quality in the standard of inquiries and investigations. He advised to ensure training programmes for its investigation officers and prosecutors for their capacity building to enable them to meet contemporary challenges to pursue the mega corruption cases in the respected courts as per law. 

He said that NAB officers consider eradication of corruption as their national duty and the recent increase in complaints registration manifested people’s confidence over the Bureau.

He also revealed that NAB has established a state-of-the-art forensic science laboratory having modern facilities including of analysing digital forensic, question documents and finger prints. The lab helps investigation officers in conducting investigations of cases on the basis of solid evidence. Due to this reason, NAB has 68.8 percent cases conviction ratio in Accountability Courts as compared to other such anti-corruption institutions.

He said that NAB strictly believes in protecting and upholding the dignity and self esteem of visiting people as NAB is a human friendly organization having faith on corruption-free Pakistan.

He said NAB as an anti-corruption organization is making sincere efforts of eradicating corruption from the country which has been lauded by esteemed national and international institutions from time to time.