Govt to change NAB law for returned cases

ISLAMABAD: The government has planned to amend the National Accountability Ordinance — the law that governs the National Account­ability Bureau (NAB) — to empower accountability courts to decide the fate of over 200 undecideds, dormant references.
Federal Minister for Law and Justice Azam Nazeer Tarar at a press conference on Friday disclosed that the government had proposed amendments to sections 4 and 5 of the ordinance to empower accountability courts to determine the fate and forum for those references whose jurisdiction have been ousted from the ambit of NAB through a previous amendment to the accountability laws.
While the Supreme Court has yet to decide the fate of the amendment made to the ordinance last year, the law minister said the government was all set to promulgate an ordinance to cover certain deficiencies in the last year’s amendments.
The minister said there had been rumours about the future of the references returned by accountability courts after the last year’s amendments. He said those references were not quashed and the courts had only returned them to NAB for lack of jurisdiction.