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ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court was informed on Wednesday that the National Accountability Bureau was responsible for the escape of Tauqir Sadiq, the former chairman of Oil and Gas Regulator Authority, from the country in 2012 when he was reportedly facing charges related to a Rs82 billion scam.
A commission set up by the apex court to oversee NAB’s performance presented its report on Wednesday, indicating some flaws in the NAB Ordinance which were used by the prime suspect to escape from the bureau’s custody.
Also read: NAB moves SC to get Tauqeer Sadiq’s bail cancelled
The report, however, said that no law-enforcement agency had helped Mr Sadiq in fleeing the country.
It said that Mr Sadiq was present in NAB’s office in 2013 when his arrest warrant was issued. But the warrant was destroyed on orders of then NAB chairman.
During the proceedings, Chief Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja remarked that prima facie NAB was not carrying out accountability.
During interrogation, Mr Sadiq provided details of his escape highlighted in the media in 2012 saying that he had escaped to Dubai via Kabul. However, he didn’t name any individual for having assisted him in the escape.
The report said Tauqir Sadiq was in the NAB headquarters building in 2013 and the investigation officer Waqas Ahmed Khan received the warrants and immediately called the guards at the reception through intercom and directed them to detain Tauqir Sadiq.
It appears that the guards did detain Tauqir Sadiq but in the meanwhile, Mr Waqas went to a director general who stepped out of the room and on his return he explained to Mr Waqas that the warrants had been signed by the then NAB chairman retired Admiral Fasih Bokhari as a result of a confusion and that it was a mistake.
Then, right in front of Mr Waqas the DG “destroyed the signed arrest warrants”.
Later, Tauqir Sadiq managed to escape from NAB headquarters prima facie on account of this most unusual sequence of event, the report said.
It also said that in the limited time available, the commission did not have access to the necessary expertise or resources to assess the overall performance of NAB in pursuing (or not pursuing) the so-called mega cases.
“This is a time-consuming task appropriately entrusted to a suitably resourced commission who is given adequate time to consider the matter in detail. The question to be determined is how a competent and honest investigating and prosecuting agency would have handled such cases and does the performance of NAB measure up to such standards,” it said.
The commission asked if it was NAB which was not behaving in a diligent manner or was it acting in bad faith? Who could investigate NAB? The courts have the power of judicial review and are using “continuing mandamus” type of remedy to monitor progress in certain cases.
The commission also mentioned the overlapping of similar laws that cause confusions and hampered performance of state institutions dealing with corruption and white-collar crimes.
Published in Dawn, September 4th, 2015
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