20000121

Govt 'making a dent in corruption', says NAB chief

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan government's top white-collar crime investigator said inroads were being made against widespread corruption but said investigations faced "huge" problems.

Army Lieutenant-General Syed Ali Amjad also told Reuters Television his National Accountability Bureau (NAB) was probing cases against ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who is already facing trial for an alleged plane hijack attempt.

"We are in the process of making a dent in the field of corruption," Amjad said in an interview on Wednesday marking the first 100 days of the military government, which took power after the bloodless October 12 coup that toppled Sharif.

"Gradually we are going to make dents," he said.

He said corruption in Pakistan was widespread "horizontally and vertically and there is no such thing as rooting (it) out".

But he said he would feel he had "achieved something if in whatever time I have, I can bare before the public some of the most corrupt people who are masquerading as 'shurafa' (nobles)".

He said the absence of a documented economy and good investigators were some of the "huge problems" NAB faced after launching a crackdown in mid-November mainly against defaulters of big loans from state-run banks.

Amjad said he had signed arrest warrants against more than 100 people of whom more than 60 were arrested, others being either abroad or in hiding, and only two suspects were found to be wrongly arrested and were later freed.

"We will make mistakes, we have made mistakes, and we will be more than willing to publicly apologise (for it)," he said.

Anti-Sharif probe: "We are investigating," Amjad replied when asked if NAB planned to bring corruption charges against Nawaz Sharif. None have yet been filed.

He said investigations were also under way against one of Sharif's two brothers - former Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif and businessman Abbas Sharif - but he declined to specify which one.

Amjad said NAB was also taking a fresh look at charges that the Sharif government brought against former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who has not returned home from abroad after a court conviction against her and her jailed husband on one corruption charge.-Reuters