LAHORE: National Accountability Bureau Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry has proposed making the Double Shah case part of research work.

In a meeting in NAB’s Lahore office on Thursday, he termed the Double Shah case a reflection of social trends to make easy money which led to corruption.

“The cases like Double Shah should be made a case study and university students should do research on them to spread the message against corruption,” he said.

Syed Sibtul Hassan Gilani, a resident of Sambrial, Sialkot, was arrested in 2007 for receiving billions of rupees from a large number of people of his locality and adjoining areas. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison and was recently released after completing his jail term. He was accorded a warm welcome by people on his return to his native town.

NAB has recovered about Rs3.4billion and distributed among Double Shah’s affectees, however, 40 percent of the affectees are still in the queue to get their claims.

Double Shah was a schoolteacher. Later, he went to Dubai for work and he started ‘doubling’ people’s money on his return. He used to return the money to his clients with 100 percent profit in the beginning that attracted thousands of people to give him their savings in order to receive double the amount they deposited with him.

In the meeting, the NAB chairman was briefed on the cases being pursued by the regional bureau.

“NAB Punjab has, so far, recovered Rs28.051 billion through voluntary return, plea bargain and other heads of recovery in corruption cases out of which an amount of Rs1.483billion has been recovered during the first five months of 2014,” NAB Punjab Director General Husnain Ahmed told the meeting.

He added NAB had completed 463 cases during the last five months besides establishing 14,271 character building societies (CBSs) in the province. It had processed 2,355 complaints since January 2014. During this period, 69 inquiries were disposed of leaving the balance of 323 inquiries in progress. Some 33 investigations had been authorised in this period and currently 95 investigations were in progress, he added.

Qamar Zaman Chaudhry said all complaint verifications inquiries and investigations must be completed within given time. He said scrutiny of the cases must be done with utmost care to filter out the malafide complaints as they not only waste time but also distorted NAB image.

Mr Chaudhry also asked the officials concerned to maintain case diaries and that post-closure activities should be ensured like intimation to all the concerned and removal of the accused from the Exit Control List (ECL) in case of acquittal.

Published in Dawn, June 13th, 2014