PESHAWAR: National Accountability Bureau Chairman retired Justice Javed Iqbal said here on Tuesday that the bureau would not pursue the cases pertaining to income tax or sales tax against members of business community.

Presiding over a meeting during his visit to the regional headquarters of NAB Khyber Pakhtunkhwa here, he said that such existing cases against traders would be returned to Federal Board of Revenue as per the relevant law.

He said that business community was playing a role of backbone in development and prosperity of the country and deserved respect. He said that NAB was business-friendly institution and gave top priority to solving the problems being faced by the business community.

Says problems of business community to be solved on priority basis

The NAB chairman said that the bureau established separate cells at its headquarters and in all regional offices that were fully functional to focus on resolution to the problems of business community.

He also met a delegation of Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry headed by its president Daroo Khan Achakzai. He said that every person would be given property opportunity to prove his innocence with honour.

He said that 1,210 corruption references were under-trial in different accountability courts that approximately valued at Rs900 billion. He said that NAB was committed to eradicate the menace of corruption by keeping in view self-respect of all the people including bureaucrats.

The NAB chief said that he and his subordinates did not belong to any group or political party and their only job was to eradicate corruption. “We are Pakistanis and are indebted to the state,” he added.

He said that corruption was root cause of all evils that needed eradication on permanent basis for development of the country. He said that an effective plan was devised for imparting proper training and arranging refresher courses for NAB officials.

Earlier, NAB Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Director General Fayaz Ahmed Qureshi gave detailed briefing about different ongoing cases including Bus Rapid Transit, Billion Tree Tsunami, Malam Jabba Resort, Bank of Khyber and others.

He said that NAB KP received 10,085 complaints since October 2017 and of them 796 were approved for investigation after proper evaluation. He said that 190 cases were under-trial in the accountability courts. He added that report had been submitted to Supreme Court of Pakistan about 25 mega corruption cases.

Published in Dawn, September 18th, 2019