ISLAMABAD - Chairman NAB Justice Javed Iqbal has said that NAB strongly believes in “Zero Corruption, 100% Development”. NAB is absolutely committed to root out corruption with iron hands in an atmosphere of renewed energy and dynamism, where fight against corruption is being taken as national duty.
He said this while chairing a meeting of NAB DGs via video link at NAB Headquarters and said that our Father of the Nation Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah in his address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan had termed “One of the biggest curses... is corruption and bribery. That really is a poison. We must put it down with an iron hand”.
Chairman NAB said that National Accountability Bureau was established to eradicate corruption in a holistic and integrated manner and this was the backdrop against which NAB was seriously working to accomplish its mission i.e. to rid the nation from corruption and corrupt practices and make Pakistan corruption free.
He said that NAB’s operational methodology had set three stages for proceeding of cases; complaint verification, inquiry and investigation. He said NAB’s officers needed to follow Anti Corruption Strategy by adopting “Accountability for All” policy to ensure eradication of corruption. He said that the hard work, commitment, transparency and merit being put in by NAB officers were being appreciated by national and international reputed organizations. He said that NAB officers should double their efforts to nab corrupt elements and should recover from them looted money.
He said that through detailed analysis of organizational weaknesses, overhaul of procedures was to be ensured in all pillars of the organization i.e. Operations, Prosecution, Human Resource Development and Awareness and Prevention.
He said that to bar the possibility of any single NAB officer influencing the discharge of official business, the new concept of a “Combined Investigation Team” (CIT) was introduced where two investigation officers and a legal consultant, financial expert under the supervision of Additional Director/Case and concerned Director were to work as a team for a fair, transparent and unbiased, inquiry.
He said that the quality of inquiry and investigation of NAB must improve further with the establishment of NAB’s first Forensic Science Lab (FSL) in Islamabad which had all the facilities of Digital Forensics, Questioned Documents and Fingerprint Analysis which would help in lending quality and solid evidence during inquiries and investigations. He said that NAB had devised Monitoring & Evaluation System (MES) in order to monitor NAB performance of all Regional Bureaus in qualitative and quantitative terms. He said that NAB is the only Organization with whom China had signed MoU to oversee projects being undertaken under CEPC.
He said that NAB Ordinance 1999’s preamble emphasized to nab corrupt and recover looted money. Following the ordinance, NAB had recovered Rs. 328 billion since its inception and its overall conviction rate was about 86.8 percent,NAB Chairman said. He said that NAB hoped that joint efforts of all stakeholders could collaborate to curtail corruption.