ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) received around 343,356 complaints from individuals, private and public organizations since its inception. This was stated by NAB Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry while chairing a meeting to review the performance of the anti-corruption watchdog at the NAB headquarters, a statement released on Monday read. Since its inception, NAB, Chaudhry said, had authorized 11,581 complaint verifications. The authority then launched 7,587 inquiries and 3,846 investigations. Subsequently, the accountability body filed 2,808 corruption references in respective accountability courts where the bureau had a 76 per cent overall conviction ratio. Moreover, Chaudhry said that one of the major achievements of the bureau was the recovery of around Rs287.763 billion of ill-gotten money which was deposited in the national exchequer. Of this, the authority had recovered Rs45 billion, or around 15.64 per cent of the total recovered amount, was under the incumbent management. Moreover, the figures of complaints, inquiries and investigations had almost doubled in 2017 when compared to the figures from the same period in 2014. The increase in the number of complaints, Chaudhry pointed out, reflected the enhanced trust the public had in NAB. The NAB chief added that Pakistan’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) ranking, according to a recent Transparency International Report, had decreased from 175 to 116 over the past three years owing to its proactive and effective awareness, prevention and enforcement anti-corruption strategy. As a result of this, Chaudhry said Pakistan was considered as a role model for South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries for eradicating corruption. Hence when Pakistan organized and hosted an SAARC seminar in Islamabad, NAB was selected as the first chairman of the SAARC Anti-Corruption Forum. Chaudhry added that NAB had devised a comprehensive Quantified Grading System (QGS) to review and further improve the performance of its officers. Under this grading system, the NAB chief explained, the accountability bureau’s Regional offices were evaluated annually for the past three years per a set criterion which has proved to be very successful.