National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Justice (r) Javed Iqbal has said that Pakistan’s ranking in Corruption Perception Index is improving due to the bureau’s anti-graft efforts. “Pakistan’s Corruption Perception Index has decreased from 175 to 116. Pakistan is the only country whose corruption perception index is on a declining trend,” he said while chairing a meeting here on Tuesday. The NAB chairman described bribery and corruption as poison, saying “We must put it down with an iron hand.” “Father of nation Quaid-e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah had also termed bribery and corruption one of the biggest curses,” he added. He said that the anti-corruption watchdog was committed to recovering looted money from the corrupt and bringing them to the book. The NAB, he said, had chalked out comprehensive operational methodology for proceeding of cases. He added that NAB’s investigation officers were strictly following zero-tolerance policy against the corrupt. He said that the concept of a ‘combined investigation team (CIT)’ had been introduced where two investigation officers and a legal consultant were working as a team for a fair, transparent and unbiased, inquiry/ investigation. NAB had been unanimously elected as SAARC Anti-Corruption Forum chairman, which was a great achievement. Due to indiscriminate actions of NAB against corrupt, he said that the bureau had apprehended several corrupt people and presented them before the respective accountability courts. He said that comparative figures for the last one year were indicative of the hard work being put in by all ranks of NAB staff in an atmosphere of renewed energy and dynamism, where fight against corruption was being taken as a national duty. Published in Daily Times, September 19th 2018.