NAB does not have an online presence, where people can register complaints and/or provide tips on cases of corruption.
KARACHI: It is unfortunate that the performance and functioning methodology of Pakistan’s premier anti-corruption agency, the National Accountability Bureau, is not very good. The country’s dismal indicators related to wealth, economy, health, law and order, quality of life and governance are all related to endemic corruption.
There are several reasons for this. 1) The first is NAB’s voluntary plea bargaining system. Anyone who is able to make billions through corruption and if is unlucky enough to get caught, can then pay a fraction of the stolen amount and get away with practically a slap on the wrist. 2) The NAB chairman functions essentially as an investigation officer empowered to sign a challan, but this also means that no case can proceed without his approval.
Such practice is against the spirit of Section 173 of CrPC, which makes it mandatory to submit a challan within 14 days. The delay allows an accused party greater scope for engineering or manipulating ‘evidence’ and thereby weaken the case against someone accused of corruption.
3) NAB is the only anti-corruption investigation agency which does work similar to that of the police but has no police force of its own at its disposal, to help it in the performance of such work. 4) Instead of working as per law, NAB employees tend to work in accordance with standard operating procedures (SOPs) made by officers of the armed forces who used to be its custodians in the past. 5) The hierarchy is such that investigation officers cannot work independently and hence the goal of achieving a high rate of accurate prosecutions is not really possible. Furthermore, unlike other investigation agencies, NAB doesn’t have any offices at the district or even division level.
6) NAB does not have an online presence at all, where people can log in and register complaints and/or provide tips on cases of corruption. It has no account on Facebook or Twitter, and has no SMS service for registration of complaints. As per law, NAB has police stations of its own but no activity is registered there. 7) NAB has several officers who were inducted into directly, without first passing any competitive qualifying exam. This is surprising given that since 2009, civil service officers can ask to be posted to NAB once they clear the public service exam. 8) Yet another problem is how the law defines corruption in Pakistan. It is equated with bribery, embezzlement or kickbacks only. The rest of the world defines it in a much more expanded way to take into account the modern-day reality of institutional corruption and so on. Furthermore, useful anti-corruption measures such as surprise checks do not happen at all in Pakistan. 9) NAB has no link with NADRA, especially with regard to the sharing of information that the former could find of use when tackling cases of corruption. 10) NAB has no digital forensic laboratory that would allow it to have advanced investigation techniques.
Mansoor Ateeq
Published in The Express Tribune, February 3rd, 2014.
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