April 09, 2008	Wednesday	Rabi-us-Sani 2, 1429

LAHORE, April 8: The Federal Investigation Agency is likely to get back the control of its anti-crime and economic wings which were made part of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) four years ago, sources told Dawn on Tuesday.

After the announcement of the PPP-led coalition government that the powers of NAB were being curtailed, the sources said strengthening of FIA was being contemplated.

Under a proposal, they said, FIA would not only get the cases pertaining to its two wings back but also those presently being handled by the NAB. They said NAB’s powers would be limited to deal only with ‘major financial scams’.

They said the FIA staff transferred to NAB would also be repatriated once the decision was finalised.

The FIA wings were merged with NAB in August 2004 on the federal cabinet’s direction with a view to avoid ‘overlapping’ of functions.

About 5,000 inquires and cases of anti-crime and economic crime wings with 33 per cent and 100 per cent staff, respectively, were transferred to the bureau. Under the merger plan, the section (6) clauses 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 165-A, 168, 169 and 409 of FIA Act 1974 were omitted from it and added to the NAB law.

The clauses dealt with offences like a public servant taking gratification, taking gratification to influence a public servant, punishment for abetment by a public servant, a public servant unlawfully engaged in a trade and criminal breach of trust by a public servant, or banker or merchant or agent.

An FIA official told Dawn that since the transfer of its two wings to NAB, the ‘status’ of most transferred cases remained the same. “Most of the transferred (low profile) cases and inquiries remained pending as the bureau was more interested in taking up high-profile ones,” he said, and further maintained that during the last four years the people who had to file complaints about small financial scams with NAB also faced problems in getting their grievances redressed.

He said the merger had also complicated the legal proceeding against the accused in the transferred cases as there was no concept of FIR in NAB and permission to arrest an accused had to be taken from its (bureau) chief.

The official said at the time of merger, a majority of the staff of two wings was ‘unwilling’ to be transferred to the bureau. However, they were left with no other option when they were told that their services would be transferred to the surplus pool of the establishment division in case of refusing the offer.