Over the past three years, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has earned the reputation of an institution that is used by the ruling party for political victimization. The accountability watchdog hounded politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen, putting them behind bars for several months, years in some cases, without any meaningful convictions or recoveries. NAB is now asking the Federal government for more powers, allowing it to access local and offshore tax records of all politically exposed persons (PEP) and their family members through amendments in the Income Tax Ordinance 2001. Additionally, it has also requested that NAB be allowed to reopen closed transactions going back twenty years. While these are merely proposals at the moment that the government is mulling, there is a valid fear brewing amongst all those who would be affected if this were to become part of law in the Finance Bill 2021. This includes opposition parties, whose members and leaders have been at the receiving end of NAB’s ‘investigation process’, with some doing multiple long stints behind bars, only to be either released on bail or acquitted by the superior judiciary. One such case, that of Khawaja Saad Rafique and his brother, compelled the Supreme Court to issue a damning indictment of NAB’s practice of premature arrest in its decision, deeming it a human rights violation. The bureaucracy, which has also been subjected to similar treatment by NAB works with extreme caution, unwilling to put pen to paper with the fear that any signature could later result in an inquiry and possible jail time.
If the government agrees to enhance NAB’s power, allowing it to essentially perform functions that come under the Federal Bureau of Revenue’s (FBR) purview, it is likely that another wave of arrests, that will extend to PEP’s family members no less, will begin. Under the current law, NAB does not lack power, which is obvious from the frequency of and the way in which it aggressively pursues its many targets. Both the PML-N and PPP have been at the forefront, calling upon the PTI government to sit together and agree upon reasonable amendments to NAB law, which in its current state is quite arbitrary in nature and therefore easily used to hound, harass and arrest parliamentarians and bureaucrats on a whim. It would be better if NAB’s role is better defined and its powers rationalized. The ruling party should also realise that down the line, it may very well be sitting in the opposition again, at which time it will be subjected to NAB probes that are similar to what its opponents are facing currently.
