A unique legal challenge questioning the authority of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to investigate corruption cases under the National Accountability Ordinance has been pending adjudication in the Sindh High Court for nearly two years.
The matter, however, recently took a strange turn when the petitioner filed a miscellaneous application, praying the court that in absence of inquiry and investigation rules, the NAB Act be suspended and if the rules have still not framed, then the court should declare the Act itself ultra vires to the Constitution.
Advocate Tariq Mansoor had in 2020 filed a petition in the Sindh High Court raising objections to NAB’s authority to investigate the corruption cases, arguing that the accountability watchdog cannot conduct investigation without first framing rules for the same, as required under section 34 of the National Accountability Ordinance 1999.
On various hearings of the petition, the special public prosecutor for the NAB kept on seeking time for framing the rules. However, later he took a plea that the rules have been drafted and sent to the President of Pakistan and different departments of the federal government for review.
The petition during the last two years was heard by different benches of the Sindh High Court who all agreed with the petitioner that framing of the investigation rules is a requirement of the NAB Ordinance.
During one of the hearings, the petitioner presented in the court Standard Operating Procedure framed by NAB besides the rules framed to fix share of the NAB officers in the funds recovered under the plea bargain or recovery made as result of NAB’s investigations.
The petitioner on several occasions, point out that the rules were promptly framed where financial interests of NAB officers were involved. The petitioner also filed a miscellaneous application in the court claiming that in the absence of duly approved and notified NAB Inquiry and Investigation Rules, the watchdog cannot conduct investigations on the strength of SOPs Volume-I (Operational Methodology) and Volume-II (HRM Division, HQ Division, A&P Division, T&R Division and CI and MT).
According to Advocate Mansoor, non-framing of inquiry and investigation rules in accordance with section 34 of the NAB Act and its preamble has rendered the entire NAB Act inconsistent with the letter and spirit and intent of the statute and the legislature.
The petitioner recently also submitted a document of a UN convention against corruption, submitting that Pakistan had signed the convention in 2007 and taking effective measures to weed out the corruption is now an international obligation.
The court has now asked the petitioner to file all the documents regarding the UN convention, while directed the special public prosecutor for NAB and Additional Attorney General to make a definite statement about framing of NAB Inquiry and Investigation Rules clearly mentioning that whether such rules have been framed, with which authority they are lying and awaiting approval and when the same are going to be submitted in the court.
