ISLAMABAD: National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman retired Justice Javed Iqbal on Wednesday said bails were not the legal conclusion in corruption cases.

An insider told Dawn that the chairman, while reviewing two years performance of the anti-graft watchdog, discussed the bail of former Lahore Development Authority director general Ahad Cheema by the Supreme Court and asked the NAB officials to vigorously pursue white collar crime cases in the courts as “bail is not legal conclusion of the case”.

Mr Cheema, who was considered a close aide to former Punjab chief minister Shehbaz Sharif, was released on bail by the Supreme Court along with co-accused Shahid Shafiq in a case related to the Ashiana Housing Scheme scam.

The NAB chief revealed that the bureau was going to appoint “research associates” [legal experts] in all regional NAB headquarters who will assist prosecution on how to fight cases in the courts.

Later, it was revealed in the meeting that NAB had filed 332 corruption references in different accountability courts during the last two years. The meeting was also told that the bureau had filed 332corruption references, out of which 270 investigations had been completed.

The anti-graft watchdog received 75,268 complaints during the last two years, of which 66,838 weredisposed of. Similarly, action was initiated on 2,417complaints out of which 2,036 were finalised.

The bureau approved 1,240 inquiriesduring the same period while action had been completed in 1,220 inquiries, adding that it alsoaccorded approval to 432 investigations during the last two years out of which 415 inquiries had been concluded.

Javed Iqbalexpressed satisfaction over the overall performance of the bureau, saying that NAB had put its energies together to take cases to a logical conclusion as per law.

“NAB has succeeded in recovering directlyor indirectly unprecedented Rs363 billion from corrupt elements in the last two years and the recovered amount deposited in the national exchequer,” he added.

The chairman said encouraging results of the policy of awareness, prevention and enforcement had already started pouring in. “NAB is an effective anti-corruption institution – doing effective measures of eradication of corruption from the country,” he added.

Mr Iqbal said NAB concentrated onpursuing corruption, misappropriation in government funds, abuse of authority, money laundering and cheating the people at large cases.

The meeting was informed that overall performance of NAB had been enhanced due to monitoring and evaluation system.

“Collective wisdom of NAB officers isbeing utilised for conducting complaint verifications, inquiries and investigations and concluding the cases after collecting concrete evidence against the culprits,” the NAB chairman said, adding that the bureau’s executive and regional boards had been constituted for transparent and independent decision-making process, that too in light of legal aspects of the case.

The anti-graft watchdog chief said NAB’s priority was to eradicate corruption, recover the looted money and return the looted money of the people.

He said reputed international institutions, especially the World Economic Forum and Transparency International Pakistan, had lauded NAB’s awareness and prevention policy which was an honour for the bureau.

Later, Javed Iqbal directed the relevant authorities to finalise the complaint verifications, inquiries and investigations as per law so that the looted money could be recovered and deposited in the national exchequer.

Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2020