NAB chairman bans foreign tours of officials, seminars
24 October, 2013
ISLAMABAD: In an effort to put the house in order, Chairman National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Qamar Zaman Chaudhry on Wednesday declared "work emergency" in the bureau while imposing a ban of three months on foreign visits, training, seminars and symposia on all the officials.
In the directives issued to all the officials, the NAB chairman directed them to concentrate on their work because of huge pendency of inquiries, investigations and references. "There is a need to set our own house in order," the NAB chairman said.
Last week, in his first directive to the NAB officials just after assuming the charge of the office, Qamar Zaman Chaudhry had vowed to bring reforms in the NAB to make it a credible non-political accountability watchdog. He had stated that investigators would have a free hand to probe the corruption cases without any pressure.
According to sources, the NAB chief was told during the recent briefings that during the year 2012, NAB received 9,353 complaints, it authorised 978 inquiries out of which 327 had been finalised, 65 converted into references, while 586 were under process.
Out of 397 cases pending investigation, 68 have been finalised through voluntary return or plea bargain, another 17 were closed due to non-availability of prosecutable evidence, 62 converted into references while 232 are under process. The NAB is conducting prosecution of 599 references and so far succeeded in recovering Rs25 billion through plea bargain.
Last week, Qamar Zaman Chaudhry had constituted a committee headed by the deputy chairman to present a report on all the old and new scams of the successive governments and also of the prominent political politicians that were pending in the bureau for more than three years.
Sources said the committee has started its work and sought records from the NAB regional offices of Rawalpindi, Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta. Sources said the committee would complete its task within two weeks.
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