Curbing corruption: Awareness, preventive steps stressed

Performance of Awareness, Prevention Division reviewed

The country’s top anti-graft czar has stressed the need for enhanced efforts to curb corruption through awareness, prevention and enforcement.

“Corruption is the mother of all evils, which undermines development and also deprives people of their due rights,” the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairperson, Qamar Zaman Chaudhry, said.

He was presiding over a meeting to review the performance of the Awareness and Prevention Division at the bureau’s headquarters here on Thursday, said a press release. Chaudhry said that the NAB had chalked out a comprehensive national strategy and adopted a policy of zero tolerance to root out corruption and corrupt practices from the country.

He said that the NAB during the last 16 years had received about 309,000 complaints from individuals, private and public organisations and completed about 6,300 inquiries.

Out of which 56 per cent matured into formal investigation and more than 80 per cent investigations were taken into the stage of prosecution.

Out of 1,762 cases, 889 were convicted, a percentage of about 51.

Chaudhry said the bureau’s prime focus was on cases of cheating public at large by fraudulent financial companies, bank frauds, willful bank loan defaults, misuse of authority and embezzlement of state funds by government servants.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 29^th, 2016.