KARACHI: Expressing resentment over the National Accounta­bility Bureau (NAB) sparing the big fish, the Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the NAB director general and prosecutor general Sindh to come up on Sept 2 with details of inquires into cases involving small sums of money.

A three-judge bench headed by Justice Amir Hani Muslim passed the directive while hearing an appeal filed by NAB against an accountability court’s order for not granting the remand of a suspect in a corruption case involving a sum of Rs400,000.

At the outset, when a deputy prosecutor turned up with a report on NAB’s powers the bench asked him about the financial value of embezzlement or corruption that fell under the bureau’s standard to prepare a reference and initiate probe.

The prosecutor said that NAB was looking into old inquires that had been transferred to it from other investigation departments.

However, in response to another query by the bench, he conceded that the director general of NAB had authorised these inquires since he was empowered to do so.

Justice Muslim deplored that instead of laying its hands on the big fish the NAB was approving and persuing the cases amounting around Rs200,000, adding that there was hardly any difference between the anti-corruption department, the Federal Investigation Agency and NAB.

He said people were complaining against NAB because it was only laying its hands on petty suspects and putting them in prisons, and added that the prime duty of the anti-corruption organisation was to take up mega-corruption cases and stop them.

A NAB law officer sought time to file a reply.

The bench directed the director general and the prosecutor general of NAB to appear before the court on Friday with details of inquires, investigations and references involving Rs1 million or below and explain for filing of an appeal in contrary to the NAB’s own standard operating procedure which said it cannot take up matters involving below Rs100m.

Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2016