National Accountability Bureau

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The National Accountability Bureau is a Pakistani government agency, dealing with corruption. It was established on November 16, 1999 with the promulgation of the National Accountability Ordinance 1999, immediately after the military coup by Pervez Musharraf on October 12, 1999.

Its mission according to the official website:

“

is to work to eliminate corruption through a comprehensive approach encompassing prevention, awareness, monitoring and combating.^[1]

”

The bureau has two principal officers: the Chairman; and the Prosecutor General of Accountability in Pakistan. The Chairman is the head of investigation, and serves a four-year term. Lt. Gen. Amjad Naqvi was the first chairman of the bureau. Lt. Gen. Munir Hafeez is the current chairman. The Prosecutor General is the head of prosecution, and serves a three-year term. Lawyer Irfan Qadir was the first Prosecutor General.

The bureau likes to stress that it recovered over two hundred and forty billion rupees (four billion US dollars) from corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen. Human rights organizations have labeled the Bureau however as a vehicle for detaining former officials and party leaders ^[2] and a deviation from the normal justice system. The government continues to use the Bureau and a host of anti-corruption and sedition laws to keep in jail or threaten political opponents, particularly members of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party and the Pakistan Muslim League.^[3]