Corruption is a major obstacle to the country’s development: Chairman NAB

National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal on Wednesday said corruption is a big impediment to the country’s progress.

Chairing a meeting of the bureau’s executive board here, he said the anti-corruption watchdog recovered and deposited a staggering Rs71 billion of the looted national wealth in the exchequer within 22 months.

He said the bureau has been striving to recover ill-gotten money from corrupt elements, adding it has been implementing the “accountability for all” policy.

The chairman said corruption complaints, inquiries and investigations will be taken to their logical conclusion.

The executive board is likely to approve inquiries, investigations and filing of references during today’s meeting.

While talking to media earlier, the NAB chief had said that the anti-corruption watchdog has prioritized conclusive end of the mega corruption cases in order to eliminate financial irregularities across the country.

He said that the approximate ratio of penalizing corrupt elements from the courts stands at 70 per cent while NAB is following the policy of reviewing the genre of the cases but not its fees.

Rs71 billion has been submitted to the national exchequer which was recovered during the last 22 months and further steps are being adopted to uproot corruption. The institution has recovered billions of rupees from the illegal housing societies and returned to the affected people.”

Earlier the NAB team had returned from Qaimkhani’s place after a failed attempt to unlock the second safe.

However, today it was finally broken by the anti-graft watchdog officials.

The bureau sources claim that the family of the former director-general parks and horticulture department of Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) may have tried to dodge the anti-corruption body by purportedly taking out all valuables from the coffer following the arrest of Qaimkhani.

The family transferred the contents of the lock to another location prior to NAB’s raid, sources privy to the matter added.