Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Failure in recovery of over Rs 12 billion under plea bargain policy has exposed as many as 146 corrupt officials at the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), as people did not pay money to NAB they promised during the plea bargain.

According to NAB’s own documents during the last eight years, NAB reached agreements under plea bargain with 146 corrupt public servants, people from private sectors and others. But these people violated the agreements and did not pay the money they promised under plea bargain policy to NAB.

Sources told Daily Times that most of the people were public servants whose whereabouts were unknown now. NAB was trying to locate them to recover over Rs 12 billion. According to documents, NAB even failed to recover Rs 7.94 billion in the so called ‘Double Shah’ case. The members of the Double Shah group were Zaheer Abbas Ghuman, Javed Iqbal, Syed Muzamil, Munwar Shah and Syed Sibt ul Hassan who had agreed to return the money but never paid the full amount. The head of the Double Shah group Syed Sibt ul Hassan has to pay Rs 5.17 billion rupees but is unlikely to do so.

One person who refused to pay the amount under plea bargain is Rawalpindi’s Nazir Ahmad, who owes Rs 250 million. His whereabouts are unknown these days while former secretaries of market committee Abdul Hafeez and Akbar did not pay a single penny to NAB.

NAB officials are of the view that during 2015-16, 126 people have paid their dues fully out of 215 and 89 people still had to pay the amount under plea bargain. Overall, 146 people are in the defaulters’ list and NAB was pursuing them.