ISLAMABAD: In a move likely to further restrict the scope of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), parliament recently increased the minimum corruption amount required for the bureau to initiate proceedings by linking the existing Rs500 million threshold to inflation.
Interestingly NAB wanted the threshold to be brought down to Rs 300 million but the parliament did the opposite.
The change was introduced through an amendment to Section 5 of the National Accountability Ordinance 1999, which states that the amount of Rs500 million “shall be adjusted for each financial year starting from July 1, 2022, based on the inflation index published by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.”
It reads as: Amendment of section 5, Ordinance XVIII of 1999. In the said Ordinance, in section 5, in clause (6), after the word “rupees”, the comma and words “, which shall be adjusted for each financial year starting from the 1st day of July, 2022, based on inflation index published by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics” shall be inserted.”
The amendment means that the already controversial Rs500 million limit — below which NAB cannot take cognisance of corruption cases — will automatically increase every year in line with inflation, raising the bar even much higher for the anti-graft body to act.
Sources told this correspondent that NAB had instead proposed to the government and parliament that the minimum threshold be reduced from Rs500 million to Rs300 million to enable the bureau to pursue more corruption cases. However, the proposal was ignored.
