End of Accountability?

Experts weigh in on the country’s accountability mechanism

Lahore: “Forget about accountability in this country. This chapter has been closed after the recent amendments in the NAB law,” said senior advocate Raja Aamir Abbas in a reference to the recent amendments in the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO), 1999.

The NAO, 1999 is the law that governs the country’s top accountability watchdog, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). This law was amended by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) led coalition government shortly after it assumed power in April 2022.

According to Abbas, who has also served as NAB prosecutor, the year 2022 has proved to be a “Golden Year” for the corrupt who, he said, managed to get off scot-free.

In the wake of the NAB law amendment, a number of politicians and bureaucrats managed to get off the NAB hook in cases collectively involving misappropriation of several billion rupees.

The beneficiaries of the amended law include the incumbent prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, and his family, former PM Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan Peoples Party Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari and his sister Faryal Talpur, former PM Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani, former PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, former Senate deputy chairman Saleem Mandviwalla, National Assembly Speaker Raja Pervez Ashraf, federal ministers including Ahsan Iqbal, Khawaja Asif and dozens of other politicians and bureaucrats.

PM Sharif and his family alone were accused by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) of misappropriating more than Rs25 billion in a money laundering case.

When Sharif’s cabinet was taking oath, around 50% of its members were on bail. The politicians, however, claimed that the cases were politically motivated and denied any wrongdoing. Majority of these cases were registered during the rule of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

Actually Imran Khan was thrown out of the PM House days before the incumbent premier was about to be indicted in the money laundering case filed by the FIA.

The former NAB prosecutor maintained that the amendments brought to the NAO, 1999 were aimed at giving a clean-chit to the members of the ruling coalition which comprises around 10 parties.

Abbas said even before the controversial amendment, NAB had been facilitating the influential corrupt through plea bargain deals. However, after the recent amendment NAB can’t even catch a small thief.

Under the amended NAB law, the bureau cannot act against those accused of misappropriating less than Rs500 million and Provincial Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) bodies would deal with such cases.

The ACE bodies work directly under the command of the ruling government in a province and therefore it is generally believed that the ACEs cannot act independently.

Abbas said NAB earlier laid its hand on small fish like grade-16 and -17 government employees but never dared to hold the powerful accountable.

He said NAB had also remained involved in political engineering and selective accountability but instead of its restructuring and overhauling, the ruling coalition had made the bureau a toothless body.

He said NAB chairman should not have unbridled powers.

“We need restructuring of all the institutions including the parliament, the judiciary and NAB. The basic problem lies with the establishment and the parliament as the latter makes laws and the former facilitates accountability as per its priority.”

The senior lawyer said appointments in NAB and the FIA should be made purely on merit. Abbas said he hoped that the apex court would strike down amendments to the NAB law.

Former prime minister Imran Khan, who is also chairman of the PTI, has challenged the NAB law amendment in the Supreme Court of Pakistan, where the matter is still pending.

Talking to Bol News, former FIA Director General Bashir Memon, however, defended the amendments saying NAB had sweeping powers to detain suspects for up to 90 days without any charge.

“It was cruel. How can you detain a person against whom you have no evidence? It was against the fundamental rights of the people.”

He said the FIA and NAB deal with white collar crimes and to investigate such cases a lot of supporting documents are required. “There documents are received from various departments and sometimes even from foreign countries.”

Memon said the Supreme Court had taken exception to NAB’s authority to detain suspects for up to 90 days while hearing a number of cases. He said there was no need to arrest a suspect at the inquiry stage.

“The parliament has done the right thing by amending the laws. First, we should collect evidence, frame a charge and then arrest the suspect,” he said.

To a question, he said he does not think the accountability process has been jeopardized by the recent changes in the NAB law.

“The onus of proving a charge against a suspect should be on accountability departments rather than on the accused. With this change, the investigators would now adopt due diligence procedures before filing any charge against an accused person.

He said the FIA always acted wisely and prepared cases with all the evidence. The former head of the FIA also rejected the notion that influential accused had never been caught in the past.

“We had investigated fake account cases involving Asif Ali Zardari, his family and the Omni Group. We collected documents for two years and then prepared a strong case. Those cases are still in the courts and so far, several billions of rupees have been returned to the national kitty by the accused persons.”

To a question, Memon said the FIA’s case against Shehbaz Sharif was a weak one which favored the accused. He said the amounts in the bank accounts of some employees of the Ramzan Sugar Mills were basically meant for business transactions and every businessman does so.

“Even I have authorized my employees to run such accounts as I can’t be everywhere for business transactions all the time. If my business has expanded to various cities and provinces, how could I manage my transactions without authorizing my employees?”

The former official said the FIA has been dealing with many high profile cases at the moment and they were collecting evidence before filing cases against influential accused.

“A lot is going to happen in the coming days and weeks,” Memon predicted.