ISLAMABAD (November 19 2002) : The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has decided to pay handsome amount of cash rewards to the informers providing vital information leading to recovery of Central Board of Revenue (CBR) dues, defaulted bank loans and written-off amounts, official sources told Business Recorder here on Monday.
Informers' reward would be 20 percent of NAB's recovered amount up to Rs 1,000,000; 10 percent up to Rs 5,000,000; 7 percent up to Rs 10,000,000 and 4 percent up to Rs 30,000,000, Rs 50,000,000, Rs 70,000,000 and above.
However, NAB has specified that the informer's data should not be based on mere guess, gossip or rumour, but it should be based on material evidence.
For this purpose, NAB has amended National Accountability Bureau (Recovery and Reward) Rules-2002.
The decision would not only encourage the informers to come forward and help in detecting tax evasion by business community in connivance with the tax officials but also bring valuable amount to the national exchequer.
According to NAB, “informer” means any person, or a group of persons, who provides any vital or significant information or evidence leading to successful investigation, prosecution and recovery regarding bank loan default, bank write-off, CBR dues and corruption or corrupt parties resulting in the recovery of the full or a part of defaulted amount.
The identify of the informer and the information provided would be privileged and would not be disclosed by the concerned agency to any authority unless a party can establish that the need for such information outweighs the public interest in maintaining the privilege.
A Recovery and Rewards Fund would be established which shall consist of the share in the recovered amounts approved by the Chief Executive.
The final sanctioning authority for all the payments out of the NAB's Recovery and Rewards Fund shall be the NAB chairman.
The Recovery and Rewards Fund shall be utilised for the following purposes, namely:-
(a) Hiring of experts or consultants.- The Chairman NAB may approve expenditures out of the NAB's Recovery and Rewards Fund for hiring of legal experts, chartered accountants, investigators or interrogators, anti-corruption strategy experts, media consultants or any other person for an assignment relating to NAB's functions as per rules framed in consultation with the Government.
(b) Development of National Strategy on eradication of corruption.- NAB shall undertake the development and co-ordination of national strategy on eradication of corruption on a long-term basis. The Chairman NAB may approve expenditure on the development and maintenance of a national database on corruption and a media campaign encouraging the community participation and holding of events like seminars, workshops within the scope of developing a national strategy against corruption.
(c) Purchase of equipment and transport:- The Chairman NAB may purchase any equipment and transport as described pursuant to the recommendations of the Committee and due care shall be exercised to ensure adherence to the provisions of the General Financial Rules.
(d) Bonus or ex-gratia for extraordinary performance:- The Bonus or ex-gratia shall be given to those officers and staff members whose performance has been extraordinary. This amount shall ordinarily at a maximum be equivalent to the basic salaries of one year to be awarded only once a year on the recommendation of the Committee. The amount shall be decided on the basis of following, namely:-
(i) nature of work performed;
(ii) size of recovery made;
(iii) risk and initiative involved; and
(iv) rank and status of the awards.
(e) Rewards for informer.- Depending upon the nature of the case and significance of the information provided, the Committee may recommend to the NAB chairman an amount to be paid to the informer up to the percentage as contained in the schedule to these rules. If there are more than one informer in a case, the amount of reward shall be shared between the informers on the recommendations of the Committee, which shall be based upon nature and value of the information or evidence provided.
Welfare members:- 20% of the available amount in Recovery Fund out of NAB's share in recoveries will be reserved for undertaking welfare measures for NAB's employees.
