Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court of Pakistan on Wednesday directed the Establishment Division secretary and provincial chief secretaries to ensure departmental action against government employees who benefited from the National Accountability Bureau’s (NAB) voluntary return (VR) powers.

The top court directed the attorney general of Pakistan and provincial advocate generals to provide details of all such government employees to the Establishment Division secretary and chief secretaries for initiating proceedings against them.

The apex court, in its five-page detailed order in the NAB voluntary return suo moto case, had also restrained NAB chairman or any other officer authorised by him from accepting any offer of voluntary return under Section 25(a) of National Accountability Ordinance 1999.

Earlier, NAB had filed a report containing the names of hundreds of employees and civil servants who had voluntarily returned embezzled amounts and had not faced any departmental proceeding.

“Holding of offices after entering into VR has further multiplied the corruption in the country,” the order stated.

“This inaction on the part of departmental authorities towards the accused has patronised corruption by providing a window to the NAB as well to the employees, who plunder public money, then pay back a portion of the alleged amount of corruption, and then continue in their jobs,” the order stated.

“From the reports filed by the federal government and respective provincial governments, it appears that no departmental action has been taken against the officers/employees of different organisations including government department who had voluntarily returned illegally acquired monetary gains which is very unfortunate,” the court observed.

The top court directed that NAB should provide details by November 5 of the amount collected from accused persons during the last 10 years and then deposited with governments.

“What has further disturbed us is that the amount so collected by NAB in installments or otherwise is not being deposited in its entirety with the concerned government/department forthwith. Instead some of the amount, under the garb of rules or otherwise, is restrained by NAB authorities for distribution to its official towards award,” the order stated.

The top court, through its order, stated that the concept of VR was confined to those accused against whom the proceedings were yet to start and they, on their own, had approached NAB authorities by offering VR of amounts illegally gained or acquired by them.

“This concept was, however, side-tracked and instead the accused persons against whom call up notices were issued on the strength of some complaint or otherwise were extended favours by the NAB under the garb of Section 25(a), which was never intended for,” the top court observed.

At previous hearings, NAB Prosecutor General Waqas Kabir Dar produced a report, according to which a total amount of Rs 2,021.993 million – recovered under the voluntary return from civil servants currently serving in different parts of the country – had been deposited in the government coffers.

According to the report, 33 public servants serving in Lahore entered into plea bargains and deposited Rs 55.2 million; six public servants from Multan deposited Rs 8.5 million; 74 public servants from Rawalpindi deposited Rs 156 million; 374 public servants from Karachi deposited Rs 743 million; and 62 public servants from Balochistan deposited Rs 171.4 million under the voluntary return.

It also stated that 92 public servants from Sukkur deposited an amount of Rs 241.629 million and 943 public servants from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) deposited Rs 645.980 million under the plea bargain. The bureau said that a total of 1,584 public servants opted for the voluntary return of embezzled funds, of which 165 were employees of the federation, while 1,419 were of provinces.

The prosecutor said that if any accused returned 34 percent of the total embezzled money, it was up to their department to allow them to continue working or not.

The court will again take up the matter on November 7.