Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry

ISLAMABAD: Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry was startled to learn on Monday that the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had a legal claim on money it had recovered from the accused in the Rs9 billion Bank of Punjab (BoP) loan scam and suggested that its officers quit their jobs and set up a recovery agency.

“Every department will come and claim money tomorrow if this practice is allowed,” the chief justice observed.

He asked about the laws which authorised the bureau to get the money.

The bureau failed to satisfy the court over why it was claiming 40 per cent (up to 25 per cent from the complainant and 15 per cent from the accused) out of the total amount recovered in financial crimes.

When a NAB representative requested the court to grant time to seek instructions from the authorities, the bench comprising the chief justice, Justice Chaudhry Ijaz Ahmed and Justice Ghulam Rabbani ordered the bureau’s chairman to immediately convene a meeting, examine the case and come up with a joint statement.

The court suggested the bank to file an application if NAB claimed its share out of the recovered amount.

The chief justice expressed surprise when Advocate Khawaja Haris, representing the Punjab government and the BoP, informed the court about the bureau’s claim over the recovered money.

At the last hearing the counsel had also expressed apprehensions about NAB’s intensions to deduct Rs2 billion as recovery commission out of the plea bargain deal through an out-of-court settlement. He said the bureau had no right to receive the commission.

He told the court that NAB authorities had secured a part of the outstanding amount from Sheikh Mohammad Afzal, the owner of Haris Steel Industry, and others in cash or property.

He expressed the fear that the entire exercise of recovering national wealth would go waste without proper documentation.

Sheikh Afzal was arrested in Malaysia through the International Police (Interpol) and brought to Pakistan in November last year. He had confessed in a statement recorded by the Punjab NAB that he had “bought favours from a number of influential people” out of money he had fraudulently withdrawn from the BoP.

Aftab Ahmed, NAB’s investigating officer, referred to a notification issued on July 6, 2000, but Financial Crimes Director Riffat Rauf expressed ignorance about any law to justify the claim over recovered money.