ISLAMABAD: The National Account­ability Bureau (NAB) on Wednesday claimed to have recovered trillions of rupees’ worth of land across the country over the last six months.

This was announced during the 24th “DGs Conference” of the bureau, a three-day event that concluded at NAB headquarters in Islamabad.

“It was informed that through the efforts of NAB during the last six months, NAB made direct and indirect recoveries of more than Rs4 trillion, which is a record,” a press release said.

Heads of regional NAB offices presented their performance reports, highlighting that the Karachi and Sukkur regions made indirect recoveries of Rs2.5 trillion over the past year.

This was achieved by recovering 1.8m acres of forest land, and a formal report was submitted to the Sindh chief minister after the land was recovered from land grabbers. The provincial government of Sindh’s cooperation in this effort was highly appreciated.

Besides, NAB Karachi recovered Rs1.18bn through settlement. Also, NAB Sukkur recovered 631,352.26 acres of forest land, worth Rs1,103bn as indirect recovery, the press release said.

Meanwhile, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chapter of the bureau made indirect recoveries of Rs194bn, NAB’s Lahore office said that Rs23bn was recovered and returned to 31,038 victims in cases of public at large cheating in 2023-24.

The meeting was apprised that NAB Rawalpindi was also playing an important role in recovering money in major cases of fraud and returning the money to the victims, while NAB Multan and Quetta performed well to serve the country and the nation by making significant recoveries.

The meeting was informed that at present 724 inquiries and 217 investigation cases are in progress and the number of references under hearing is 821. While 16,429 complaints have been dealt with since January 2024.

During the conference, the delay in deciding old pending cases and the status of inactive accountability courts were reviewed. It was emphasised that more effort was needed to resolve pending cases in the Supreme Court and high courts.

Additionally, it was suggested that the issue of inactive accountability courts should be addressed at the relevant forum to make them functional, ultimately benefiting the nation. Furthermore, the conference decided to register cases under the Anti-Money Laundering Act against the individuals involved.

The conference was informed that in the past year, NAB’s intelligence directorate arrested 50 proclaimed offenders and 78 absconders involved in accountability cases and 12 persons involved in fraud by impersonating themselves as senior NAB officers.

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2024