ISLAMABAD: Attorney General Ashtar Ausaf Ali startled the Supreme Court on Monday when he accused the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) of abusing its authority by involving itself in the recovery of electricity bills from big defaulters.

But NAB Prosecutor General (PG) Waqas Qadeer Dar was quick to clarify, explaining that the bureau had acted to recover the bills on a request made by the government in a letter.

The PG pointed out that the law governing the use of voluntary return — a provision under the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) 1999 that allows the person found guilty of corruption to pay a certain part of the embezzled money and be released — was not made by the bureau rather it has been vested with the authority to invoke the provision under the NAO.

The AG and PG had both appeared before the two-judge bench headed by Justice Amir Hani Muslim that had taken up the case suo motu on the basis of an observation that Justice Muslim had made while hearing a NAB appeal in Karachi on Sept 2. The judge had deplored powers of the NAB chairman to allow an offender found guilty of corruption to go off scot-free without any stigma after voluntary return (VR) of the embezzled money.

Exercise of judicial authority by the bureau questioned

On Oct 24, the Supreme Court had restrained NAB chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry from approving the voluntary return till the time the court decided the VR’s fate.

On Monday, the PG regretted that the media had flashed the story of a senior official of Balochistan claiming he was involved in corruption of Rs40 billion, despite the fact that the entire budgetary allocation for the province was less than Rs40 billion.

He explained that in many cases NAB had approved voluntary return on court directions, but Justice Muslim wondered why NAB had not challenged court directions to go for the voluntary return.

When the court asked about the government’s standpoint on voluntary return, the AG said the issue had also been taken up by the Senate.

At this, Justice Muslim observed that let the Senate and the National Assembly do their job independently but the AG should explain the stance of the government on the voluntary return.

The AG sought a week’s time to submit a report.

Justice Muslim said people had reservations about the practice of voluntary return by NAB, especially when in some cases the amount of voluntary return had exceeded the amount received under another provision of the law called plea bargain.

The judge also questioned whether the NAB, being an administrative department, could exercise judicial authority by invoking the provision of voluntary return.

Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed, another member of the bench, wondered whether NAB had been reduced to an institution for making recoveries as accused, after plundering millions, went off scot-free by entering into VR deals.

He regretted that the NAB itself suggested ways to the accused to opt for the VR, adding the bureau should issue ads in newspapers asking the guilty of looting the national kitty to seek the option of VR.

The NAB in its last report had pleaded that ordinarily the VR was accepted in matters of cheating public at large like in cases of Double Shah, Modaraba scam, private housing schemes, etc.

This legal provisions of VR, it argued, had helped in expeditious recovery of state funds as was done in the Rental Power Plants (RPP) cases where an amount of Rs4bn had been recovered.

As the recovery of state money acquired through corruption and corrupt practices and recovery of outstanding defaulted amount from the accused was one of the mandates as per preamble and expressed provisions of the NAO 1999, therefore the voluntary return helps the process of recovery from the accused against whom prosecutable evidence is found lacking, the NAB had argued.

Published in Dawn, January 3rd, 2017