It is a sad irony that the country’s top accountability watchdog, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), may soon need to investigate a case against itself. Appearing before a parliamentary committee, the Finance Ministry clarified that it hadn’t a clue where the Rs 816 billion, that NAB claimed it has recovered over the course of its 16-year existence, was parked. What is more, Finance Ministry officials stated that during the same period they had received only Rs 6.45 billion from NAB as non-tax revenue, but ‘could not ask’ the latter why it had not deposited the remaining amount in government accounts or where it was deposited currently.
It is very likely, rather expected, that a satisfactory explanation is provided by NAB as to how such an exorbitant amount of money that should have landed in state coffers, has remained missing for so long. One possibility is that the funds have mistakenly been credited toa single or various official accounts for all these years and to correct the discrepancy, merely need to be transferred to the relevant Finance Ministry accounts. If that is the case then a significant financial cost has been incurred by the state as it was denied access to funds that could have been much more prudently utilized. Another possibility is that the NAB has significantly overstated its recovery amount, which would further damage its already fledgling reputation as a beacon of purity out to rid the country of financial malfeasance. Unless brushed under the rug, as matters such as these somehow are more often than not, it seems unlikely that there is a digestible, simple account of how this mess came to be. Going by its operations in recent years; the loose definition of actionable evidence and ‘loss to the exchequer’ that the NAB uses to harass and incarcerate politicians and bureaucrats, had some other public sector enterprise been involved in such a scandal, multiple investigations would have been opened and arrests made by now.
That the matter has been immediately sent to the Auditor General Pakistan (AGP) for a special audit is a welcome step. However, one thing the entire episode reveals is that the NAB law is a fundamentally flawed, one that allows the institution to operate as it sees fit with impunity. In the absence of a law that is rational and fair, NAB will remain unaccountable.
