Nabbing the crooks

Let us see prosecutions and convictions on back of these arrests, as these crooks must not be allowed to wriggle away


Editorial June 16, 2015
Five senior officials of the Lines Area Redevelopment Authority (LARP) have been arrested by NAB, including two deputy directors and three additional directors. PHOTO: National Accountability Bureau

Terrorism has many facets, and comes not only with bombs, bullets and guns. It is not only to be fought militarily but also by agencies that are perhaps, rarely thought of as being in the counter-terror business, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) being one such. NAB has been busy in Karachi in recent weeks chipping away at the hitherto untouchable land-grabbers and their ilk, many of whom work in government departments themselves and have built corrupt empires within. Five senior officials of the Lines Area Redevelopment Authority (LARP) have been arrested by NAB, including two deputy directors and three additional directors. NAB had already raided the LARP office three months ago after receiving a string of complaints from people in the Lines Area, and took away data. The arrests appear to have been made on the basis of what was discovered when the data was analysed.



The arrested are alleged to have been involved with a complex scam known as ‘china cutting’ that has netted them billions of rupees over 15 years. They bypassed the mandatory auction of land, split it into smaller plots and sold the plots at deflated prices, and then later aggregated the plots again and resold them to a developer for a far higher price making huge profits by so doing. NAB was also busy a fortnight earlier and had arrested the secretary of the excise and taxation department as well as, somewhat ironically, the director of the anti-corruption department.

We warmly welcome these developments. Unless institutionalised corruption is tackled directly at the most senior level, it will never be defeated. Arresting a few of the small fry takes nobody anywhere. The culture of impunity that surrounds corrupt officials is not just confined to Karachi; it is a countrywide phenomenon. There is no secret about it, the corruption is well known and the common man has little choice but to pay the going rate to corrupt officials. Now let us see prosecutions and convictions on the back of these arrests, as these crooks must not be allowed to wriggle away.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 17th,  2015.

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