Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly’s Standing Committee for Law and Justice on Wednesday directed National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chairperson Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal to appear before it on May 22.

He was supposed to appear before the committee on Wednesday, but he excused himself saying that there were prior commitments. In his response to the initial summon, the NAB chief said he learnt about the directive on Wednesday morning and by that time his schedule for the day had already been planned. Therefore, he requested the committee to set a new date with appropriate time in between.

The standing committee has summoned Justice (retd) Iqbal over a money laundering probe started against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif on the basis of a flimsy media report.

On Wednesday, when the NAB chief’s response was communicated to the committee, which had called him after taking notice of a point of order raised by PML-N lawmaker Rana Hayat, it refused to accept the excuse. The committee directed the NAB chief to review his decision and sent all its correspondence on the matter to the National Assembly speaker.

However, later in the day, the committee directed him to appear before it on Friday and later changed the date to May 22 (next Tuesday).

PTI MNA Arif Alvi, a member of the committee, remarked that the NAB chief should not be disrespected like this and claimed he was being pressured by the ruling party lawmakers.

On May 8, the anti-graft body had ordered an inquiry against Nawaz and others for allegedly laundering $4.9 billion to India. According to a NAB statement, the chairman took notice of a media report which made the claims citing a World Bank report.

However, the World Bank clarified that its report did not mention names or amounts, neither alleged money laundering.

Later the State Bank of Pakistan also rejected that $4.9 billion had been remitted to India from Pakistan.

In a press release issued on September 21, 2016, the SBP rejected the estimates of $4.9 billion remittances from Pakistan to India.

“This number is given in Migration and Remittances Factbook 2016 prepared by the Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development (KNOMAD).”

The press release said that the Factbook data on bilateral remittance flows were estimates and not the actual flows which were based on a number of assumptions about the migrant stock, per worker income, etc.

“The methodology used to estimate these numbers is based on a World Bank’s Working Paper by Ratha, Dilip, and William Shaw (South-South migration and remittances. No. 102. World Bank Publications, 2007). This methodology has serious issues, particularly in case of Pakistan, as also acknowledged by the authors themselves stating that ‘Interpreting the meaning of migrant stocks also presents some difficulties. Pakistanis in India and Russians in Ukraine became migrants following partition of the original country.'”

The State Bank thus concluded that the study was clearly flawed as the migrants at the time of Indo-Pak partition in 1947 had become Pakistani citizens. The State Bank categorically rejected such estimates as there were contrary to facts and did not make sense.

Published in Daily Times, May 17^th 2018.