Rs1,000 billion corruption swept under the carpet due to NRO

[Naveed Yaseen]

By Muhammad Ahmad Noorani
ISLAMABAD: According to the official National Accountability Bureau (NAB) list, approximately Rs165 billion was written off because of the promulgation of the NRO and the subsequent act of making the NAB impotent but official sources claim that according to ‘actual’ calculations corruption cases of about Rs1000 billion were terminated.

These also include such cases where even the initial investigations had yet to begin. In just one case, a case of a highly influential individual involving a US$1.5 billion (Rs122 billion) plunder was terminated with the legal stroke of an illegal pen. In yet another case, the wife of an influential politician walked away scot-free and an amount of exactly Rs310 million was written off. There is a long list of cases in which complete immunity of billions of rupees was granted to a select segment of society.

Besides the NAB list of NRO beneficiaries given to the Law Ministry for presentation before the prime minister and then the National Assembly, hundreds of other political luminaries were given a clean slate in corruption cases without mentioning the word NRO and thousands of political workers involved in heinous criminal activities too got their records cleansed.

The National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) was promulgated as a result of a deal between then military dictator Pervez Musharraf and the PPP leadership on the night of October 5, 2007 to facilitate the election of General Musharraf in Army uniform on October 6, 2007. Under this highly controversial, discriminatory and unconstitutional NRO, corruption cases of hundreds of politicians, influential bureaucrats and political activists of some political parties were withdrawn and terminated with one stroke of the pen.

According to legal experts the NRO was unconstitutional and a discriminatory law on the basis of the following three points; first, it applied to a certain category of people and is not applicable to each and every citizen. Second, it applies for a specific duration of time i.e. before October 12, 1999, thus it involved time limitations which again make it discriminatory with respect to time limits. Third, it excludes the indemnity benefits to people accused of cooperative societies, financial and investment scams which effectively means it excluded some people from taking benefits and included a select group of people to be benefited. It is in sheer violation of articles 4 and 25 of the Constitution which speaks of equality of citizens and declare that every citizen is entitled to equal treatment of law.

It is worth mentioning here that the National Assembly Standing Committee on Law and Justice, which has a majority of ruling PPP members and comprises mostly ex-judges and senior lawyers, has recommended removal of these three discriminatory steps from the NRO thus admitting that it was an entirely unconstitutional and discriminatory law.

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