ISLAMABAD, Dec 8: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Friday claimed to have busted a gang involved in counterfeiting local and foreign currency, special saving certificates, stamps and fake educational certificates of various universities and arrested its members in different cities.

An official handout says that NAB on a tip-off arrested a number of accused involved in the scam after conducting raids in Karachi, Lahore, Gujrat, Islamabad and Muzaffarabad.

A source in NAB told Dawn that the bureau staff faced stiff resistance from the Azad Kashmir police when they conducted a raid to arrest some of the accused in the territory which showed that either the culprits had support from some government persons or high officials of the police.

He said the raid in AJK was conducted by NAB officials from Lahore with the assistance of Rawalpindi staff. However, he said, the AJK police even detained NAB officials for about six hours and helped the accused remove their machinery and other equipment which was being used by them in counterfeiting the official documents. He claimed that some of the policemen even opened fire on NAB officials during the raid.

Without giving further details, he said the investigations into the matter had commenced to establish its magnitude, modus operandi and the culprits involved.

According to the handout, NAB recovered special saving certificates worth over Rs20 million, traveller cheques, counterfeit local and foreign currency notes of various denominations, large quantity of certificates of educational institutions, including NED University of Engineering, Karachi, letter pads of various post offices and banks, rubber stamps and printers and computers used in the counterfeit activity.

Meanwhile, NAB claimed that it had so far recovered over Rs203 billion through bank default recoveries, plea bargains and indirect recoveries. The Bureau has investigated 1,871 cases, out of which 814 have been completed, 496 are under investigation and 561 have been closed.

Similarly, it says that 1,036 cases were filed in courts, out of which 627 were decided and 447 convictions were made. Presently, 409 cases are under progress.

NAB has investigated a total of 1,849 cases against government servants, out of which 1,129 were sent for prosecution.

It says that 204 cases were investigated against politicians and 114 were sent for prosecution.

It further says that 26 ex-armed forces officers were also investigated and 18 were sent for prosecution and out of 497 businessmen investigated, 357 cases were sent for prosecution.