National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal on Mnday said the bureau’s successful anti-corruption strategy has led to the recovery of Rs538 billion from corrupt elements during the tenure of the incumbent management. Chairing a meeting to review performance of NAB’s Operations and Prosecution Divisions here at NAB headquarters, he said father of the nation, Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in his address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, had termed corruption and bribery as the biggest curses for a country. “That really is a poison. We must put it down with an iron hand,” the NAB chairman said, adding that the NAB was established to eradicate corruption in a holistic and integrated manner as NAB strongly believes in zero tolerance in eradication of corruption-100 percent development.” He said NAB was absolutely committed to rooting out corruption with an iron hand in an atmosphere of renewed energy and dynamism, where fighting against corruption was being taken as national duty. The meeting was informed by Director General Operations that NAB had received 496,460 complaints since its inception, out of which 487,124 complaints were disposed off. NAB has authorized 16,093 Complaint Verification (CVs), while 15,378 Complaint Verification were completed. NAB has authorized 10,241 inquiries, out of which 9,275 inquiries had been completed. NAB had authorized 4,654 investigations, out of which 4,358 investigations had been completed by NAB since its inception. It was informed that it has recovered Rs819.793 billion directly and indirectly since its inception, which was a record achievement. It was further informed that NAB had filed 3,754 references in various Learned Accountability Courts, out of which 2,477 references were decided by Learned Accountability Courts. Currently, 1,274 references having worth Rs1,335.019 billion were under trial at various Learned Accountability Courts. NAB was considered a role model among SAARC countries. Due to the reason, NAB was selected as the first Chairman of SAARC anti Corruption Forum. NAB was the focal Department of Pakistan under United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC). NAB had introduced a new concept of Combine Investigation Team (CIT) to benefit from the experience and collective wisdom of senior supervisory officers to further improve the standard and quality of inquiries and investigations on the basis of solid evidence as well as statements of witnesses and documentary evidence. Besides that it had established state of the art Forensic Science LAB with the facilities of Digital Forensics, Questioned Documents and Fingerprint analysis. These initiatives of NAB were lending quality.