PESHAWAR: Accountability courts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are left with only 11 cases for decision following the recent drastic changes to the anti-graft law that led to the return of around 130 references to the National Accountability Bureau in the last couple of months due to a lack of jurisdiction, official sources reveal.

The province has eight accountability courts but only five of them, all in Peshawar, are currently functional.

Extensive changes were made to the National Accountability Ordinance, 1999, by parliament earlier this year through the enactment of the National Accountability (Amendment) Act, 2022, and National Accountability (Second Amendment) Act, 2022, which were published in the official Gazette on June 22 and Aug 16, 2022, respectively.

An official told Dawn on condition of anonymity that the most important amendment was made to Section 5(O) of the NAO to define the offence of corruption and corrupt practices as the one involving an amount not less than Rs500 million.

After the law changes, the accused in several references with the alleged corruption of less than Rs500 million formally sought their acquittal on the basis of those amendments under Section 265-K of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

Only 11 cases left with them for decision

However, the accountability courts, instead of acquitting them, returned those references to the NAB for being placed before “other appropriate forums available under the law.”

The judges declared on some of those references that for the purpose of jurisdiction, allegations of corruption and corrupt practices could neither be investigated by the NAB nor could those cases be heard by an accountability court.

The amendments in question were also given retrospective effect with those Acts declaring that those changes to laws should be deemed to have taken effect from the commencement of the NAO, 1999.

Recently, an accountability court returned a reference against Pakistan Peoples Party leader and former federal minister Dr Arbab Alamgir and his wife, Asma Alamgir, who were indicted by it in 2019 for possessing Rs332 million assets allegedly disproportionate to the known sources of their income.

The NAB, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, had filed a joint reference against the couple alleging that the two had accumulated moveable and immovable assets to the tune of Rs332 million in their names as well as those of their dependents and benamidars.

The couple claimed innocence saying all their assets were acquired through known sources of income.

The NAB claimed that the reference was pertaining to assets in the country, whereas the supplementary reference regarding the couple’s foreign assets would be filed after the obtaining of documentary evidence from the respective countries through the mutual legal assistance treaty.

However, the bureau has so far neither filed any supplementary reference nor has it produced evidence of those alleged foreign assets.

While returning the reference to NAB, the judge declared, “Neither there is any hope of filing the supplementary reference in near future nor can the case be kept pending for indefinite period in order to facilitate the prosecution to bring the case within the pecuniary jurisdiction in view of the fresh amendments in the NAO.”

The official told Dawn that currently, the accountability courts had only the cases involving the alleged corruption of over Rs500 million.

The most important pending reference is that of an alleged funding embezzlement in the procurement of weapons for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police department in the financial year 2009-10.

Presently, former provincial police chief Malik Naveed Khan and budget officer of police Jawed Khan are the prime accused in the case. They’re indicted on July 7, 2015, by the accountability court for receiving kickbacks from private contractor Arshad Majeed, who turned approver in the case, and inflicting a loss of Rs2031.25 million during procurement of weapons and equipment for the police department in 2009-10.

They had pleaded not guilty to the charge, so they have been tried for many years.

Another noted case pending with the accountability courts is against Afzal Khaliq, also known as Double Shah, and his co-accused. The NAB claims that the accused were in league with each other dishonestly and fraudulently cheated 4,416 people on pretext of Islamic mode of investment and took away Rs12.59 billion.

Similarly, a pending case is about embezzlement in the Workers Welfare Board’s funds allegedly by its then secretary, Tariq Awan, and other officials during the procurement of equipment, provision of scholarships to students and purchase of land for a labour colony.

In the case, several supplementary references were combined along with the main reference against the accused.

Another reference is against a fake online investment company, which allegedly cheated the public at large on the pretext of providing people with huge profits on their invested money. The accused faces the charge of Rs77.7 million worth of corruption.

Published in Dawn, December 18th, 2022