ISLAMABAD - Chairman National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Justice ® Javed Iqbal has said that the Bureau, under its effective and comprehensive National Anti-Corruption Strategy, is committed for logical conclusion of mega corruption, white-collar crime cases by adopting “NAB’s faith-corruption-free Pakistan” policy as the figures of complaints in 2019 were much better as compared to the figures of complaints received in 2018.

In a statement issued here yesterday, the NAB chairman said that the overall complaints in 2019 were 53,643 and processed complaints were 42,760 whereas the complaints in 2018 were 48,591 and processed complaints were 41,414, he said.

He explained that the NAB during 2019 processed 1308 complaint verifications, 1686 inquiries and 609 investigations and recovered Rs 141.542 billion from corrupt elements whereas Rs 466. 069 billion have been recovered since 2000 which is a great achievement as per the annual report of 2019 of NAB.

Justice ® Javed Iqbal said that NAB has introduced a new concept of Combine Investigation Team (CIT) in order to benefit from the experience and collective wisdom of senior supervisory officers, a system of CIT comprising Director, Additional Director, Investigation Officer and a Senior Legal Counsel has been put in place.

He disclosed that the accumulative success ratio of NAB is 68.8% in 2019 with 1983 successful disposal of cases.  NAB has established its state-of the-art Forensic Science Laboratory in NAB Rawalpindi. In 2019, 15747 questioned documents and 300 thumb impressions were analyzed in 50 cases and forensic analysis was carried out on 74 digital devices (Laptops, Mobile phones, Hard Disks etc).

The data shows that the NAB had filed 1219 corruption references in respected Accountability Courts which are under trial involving more than Rs. 900 billion.

The Chairman NAB said that absconders and proclaimed offenders would be arrested and taken to task as per law to recover looted money from them and will deposit in national exchequer.

He further said that the NAB is fully geared up to eradicate corruption and directed all Regional Bureaus of NAB to file applications in respected accountability courts for early expediting the under trial corruption references.

He also directed all prosecutors to pursue the cases with full preparations as per law on the basis of solid and incriminating evidence to conclude the corruption references to their logical conclusion.

He said that NAB is the only institution in the world which has itself fixed timeframe of 10 months to conclude white collar crime cases.

It is important to note here that NAB has not only proved its performance with its actions not words impartiality and fairness as per law and started across-the-board actions against big fish. Today, reputed national and international organizations are lauding NAB’s efforts under the dynamic leadership of Justice Chairman NAB Javed Iqbal for fulfilling his promise excellently without any discrimination and on merit and have restored the prestige of NAB by not caring about duress, browbeating of the corruption accused.

The Chairman NAB not only reviews progress of NAB on regularly basis but also progress on all public complaints listened by the Chairman NAB and all DGs of NAB at their respective regional bureaus related to corruption and corrupt practices on the last Thursday of every month. Due to this reason, as per survey of Gillani and Gallop, 59 percent people of Pakistan have shown their confidence upon NAB.

He said that NAB has signed an MoU with China to oversee CPEC projects being conducted in Pakistan. He said that youth is our future; NAB has signed an MoU with Higher Education Commission in order to educate youth about the ill effects of corruption at an early age. More than 50,000 Character Building Societies have been established in colleges and universities of the country.