ISLAMABAD: Taking a step towards digitalisation and facilitate victims of fraud cases, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has devised a system for disbursing their recovered money from the fraudulent through online.

“Addressing difficulties faced by victims of various financial scams in receiving their amounts, NAB has decided to transfer recovered funds to victims online,” says an official press release issued by the NAB headquarters on Wednesday.

The new payment system was launched at a ceremony presided over by NAB chairman retired Lt-Gen Nazir Ahmed. In the first phase, recovered funds were directly transferred online to victims of the B4U fraud.

The NAB chief himself initiated the online transfer of funds directly into the bank accounts of victims.

In the past, NAB used to return money to a limited number of victims at a time via pay orders, a time-consuming process that required victims to physically visit NAB offices to receive their money. Now, NAB has completely digitised this process so that funds can be transferred directly to the victims’ bank accounts, eliminating the traditional, time-consuming method, the press release said.

At the ceremony, NAB Islamabad/Rawalpindi region transferred Rs878.709 million to accounts of 5,008 victims of the B4U fraud in a single day

NAB began its investigation into the B4U fraud in Feb 2021 based on complaints from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) and the victims.

The investigation has now been completed after which the accused have admitted a liability of Rs7.3 billion, of which an initial amount of Rs3.7 billion has been recovered and it is being distributed among 17,250 victims. The remaining amount will be distributed among victims after its recovery.

Published in Dawn, September 25th, 2025