ISLAMABAD: The Senate Standing Committee on Law and Justice paved the way on Monday for enforcement of new accountability laws that will disqualify for life beneficiaries of plea bargain (PB) and voluntary return (VR) deals from holding public office and securing bank loans.

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Bill, 2017, approved by the Senate committee, will also shift powers to approve PB deals from the NAB chairman to accountability courts.

“Now the power to approve plea bargain deals rests with courts instead of the NAB chairman,” said Law Minister Zahid Hamid after the committee approved the bill and referred it to the Senate for the final nod to make it a law.

At present only PB deals are sent to the accountability courts concerned for a final decision after their approval by the NAB chairman while VR deals require approval of the chairman and those who avail VR facility are not disqualified and can retain their public offices from the next day.

Under the existing NAB laws, the accused after having PB deals are disqualified for 10 years and cannot get any bank loan for the same period.

The Supreme Court had already ordered withdrawing the authority of the NAB chief to approve PB deals. The new bill will amend the NAB Ordinance, 1999.

It is believed that the Senate panel has paved the way for smooth enforcement of the bill as it had already been approved by the National Assembly on Jan 7, a week after President Mamnoon Hussain promulgated an ordinance amending NAB laws concerning PB.

The presidential ordinance was similar to the government’s bill as it also struck down powers of the NAB chairman to approve PB deals and that its beneficiary will not be eligible to hold any public office and get bank loans forever.

Following promulgation of the ordinance, the government introduced the bill in the NA on Jan 7 for the same amendments mentioned in the ordinance and the bill was approved by the lower house the same day and was sent to the Senate.

In the Senate, the bill faced strong opposition as senators belonging to main opposition Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), including Atizaz Ahsan and Farooq Naek, called it against basic rights. They were of the view that there should not be a life ban on beneficiaries of PB deals.

Meanwhile, Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani wrote to the Parliamentary Committee on National Accountability Laws demanding holistic review of the entire accountability mechanism of the country instead of amending specific laws in bits and pieces.

He was of the view that amending PB and VR provisions of the National Accountability Ordinance, 1999, will not be sufficient to ratify the accountability system but the whole NAB Ordinance should be revisited.

“As a stopgap arrangement, I have referred the matter of plea bargain and voluntary return (section 25 of the NAB Ordinance, 1999) to the Standing Committee on Law and Justice for consideration and report, however, I am conscious of the fact that there is dire need to holistically review the existing accountability mechanism,” he had said.

The NAB officials have agreed many times in the past that the bureau could not receive total amount fixed under PB and VR deals as the accused after paying some initial amount managed to go off scot-free.

According to the NAB’s official data available on its website, the bureau had struck 1,400 VR and 418 PB deals from Jan 2008 to June 30, 2015, amounting to billions of rupees. And only in one year’s time (2015-16), 215 PB deals were approved.

Published in Dawn, March 28th, 2017