Unfinished business

The deceptions and the attempts to fool the Court by NAB in the handling of RPP case seems completely underhand.

There is too much unfinished business in our country. In departments everywhere, we have inquiry reports which leave open questions and commission findings which are never followed up on. It now seems there may be an addition to this. According to a report in this newspaper, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has covertly ended its inquiry into the Rental Power Plants corruption case, allegedly on the basis that since no money trail existed, no one could be identified as a culprit. The high-profile case involved, among others, former prime minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, former finance minister Shaukat Tarin, former finance secretary Salman Siddique, former water and power secretary Shahid Rafi and former establishment and water and power secretary Ismail Qureshi.

To add insult to injury, while the case was wound up during the last days of the PPP government, the Supreme Court has been deliberately fooled by not being informed of this. Instead, more time has been sought from it to continue the investigation. It should be noted that early this year, the Court ordered the arrest of 15 persons, including Mr Ashraf, in the case. In another twist, an investigator for NAB, Kamran Faisal, was found dead in January under mysterious circumstances.

We all know the case is a serious one. The handling by NAB, the deceptions involved and the attempts to fool the Court seem completely underhand. The actions by the body are unacceptable. Given the situation in our country, there is an urgent need to bring the corrupt to justice. If there are deliberate attempts to let dishonest officials who have walked away with public money off the hook, we will be in deeper trouble than ever before. NAB was set up to tackle wrongdoing at high levels. Instead, it seems to be doing just the opposite by conniving to let top officials off the hook and thus promoting a culture of still greater freedom for those at the top to engage in corrupt acts, confident that they will get off scot-free at the end of the day.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 26^th, 2013.