MULTAN: Adhocracy rules the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) as offices of directors general (DG) are being run on an acting charge basis by the chairman. Legal experts call such arrangements violation of the Supreme Court ruling.

Eight DG posts are being run by the directors who are working in grade 21 but are getting the salaries of grade 20. Of them, three have been on acting charge since 2014. They are Mirza Sultan Saleem (Training DG at NAB Headquarters), Maj Shahzad Saleem (Lahore DG), and Mirza Irfan Baig (Sukkur DG).

The other five directors have been holding the posts of DGs since April 2017, and they are Farmanullah (Quetta), Atiqur Rehman (Multan), Irfan Mangi (Rawalpindi), Mujahid Akbar Baloch (Human Resource Management at NAB Headquarters) and Fayyaz Qureshi (Peshawar).

Former NAB deputy prosecutor Naeem Khan said that the Supreme Court in its ruling in the Al-Jehad Trust vs the Federation of Pakistan had set parameters. He stated that as the case was regarding the use of the office of NAB chairman by the deputy chairman, the Supreme Court mentioned that the qualification for the office of chairman is much higher than the qualification of the deputy chairman and the deputy chairman is not even qualified to be appointed as chairman as it is a settled proposition of law that cannot be achieved directly under the law, cannot be permitted or allowed to be achieved indirectly.

Also, NAB laws do not allow such provision.

Advocate Fahim Akhtar Gill said that according to NAB Ordinance of 1999 the chairman NAB may delegate any of his powers to an officer of NAB ‘subject to such conditions, if any, as may be specified in the order, for carrying out the purposes of this Ordinance’; assigning the acting charge of the posts of DGs to directors was, however, the violation of the court ruling in the Al-Jehad Trust Case.

He said that NAB authorities were committing contempt of court by continuing this illegal practice.

Besides this adhocracy, 10 administrative officers of grade 20 have not been promoted because of the delay in convening of the promotion board for years.

Sources said the NAB chairman time and again ordered convening the promotion board so that the acting charge DGs are promoted as regular DGs but the board meeting is being delayed to accommodate the Multan DG who is not eligible for promotion as his service is withheld as punishment for five years on the direction of the Supreme Court.

They said that the meeting of the board was earlier scheduled for April and later August, however, both time, it was postponed to give more time to Mr Rehman. Now, he has submitted an appeal to the chairman to exonerate him.

Both the board meeting and the appeal are pending.

They said that after his punishment

Rehman was not entitle to hold charge of DG even in his own pay scale but he has been accommodated by successive NAB chairmen.

They said the chairman has no authority to let off punishment as Mr Rehman’s appeal has been rejected by the president. Mr Rehman, being director of investigation wing-2, forwarded arrest warrant for a person to the NAB chairman instead of the Lahore DG for approval to favor the accused. The matter came to limelight when the bail matter of the servant of the main accused came before the chief justice of Pakistan and during the hearing it surfaced that Rehman had deliberately delayed the execution of warrants which gave ample time to to the main accused to flee. An ensuing inquiry on the direction of Supreme Court resulted in confiscation of his service for five years from March 20, 2015 to March 20, 2020.

The officers facing promotion delay include Major Shahzad (Lahore DG), Mujaid Akbar Baloch (human resource), Mirza Sultan Saleem (training wing), Farmanullah (Quetta), Mirza Irfan Baig (Sukkur), Fayyaz Quershi (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Abdul Hafeez Khan (Multan director) and Irfan Naeem Mangi (Rawalpindi).

The delay in promotion may cost Mr Baloch too much as he is going to retire in April 2020.

NAB spokesperson Nawazish Ali Asim said that there is no reality in the reports that the promotion board is being delayed to favour Mr Rehman.

“Procedure to hold the meeting of board is underway and one day it will be held,” he said.

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2019