Request for the resignation of the Chairman NAB

Open Letter by Amer Nazir

Mr Naveed Ahsan
Chairman,
National Accountability Bureau,
Pakistan

Subject: Request for your resignation.

It is with astonishment that I have today read your speech given on the Anti-corruption day. The entire world is now finally coming to grips with the fact that the statements given by the Pakistan government are nothing but lies. It is not even ironic anymore that the same newspaper issue also carried the news that Pakistan has graduated to the position of the 7th most corrupt nation in the world.

Mr Chairman, NAB has absolutely no reason to claim any moral high grounds. Perhaps formed in good faith initially, it has emerged as a Gestapo type organization with the sole aim to impress the armys Holier than thou approach vis-à-vis the common citizens of Pakistan. This was the first and the foremost propaganda by the army and now the last defense to retain control of Pakistan and to manipulate its national wealth. And this image of the army is also destined to shatter quite soon.

The time has now come that every self-respecting person anywhere in the world would rightfully disbelieve in the figures and numbers quoted by you and would be automatically inclined to wonder about the barbaric and horrific stories that are concealed behind the statistics which you I am sure so strongly wish to be accepted as being above board.

In a way, this is where the salvation of Pakistan also lies today. The exposures are eventually proceeding in the right direction. It has now come to a stage that we the common people can demand of you to either prove your claims or resign as you would have no moral reason otherwise to continue henceforth. So that finally we can take Pakistan forward with officers possessed of moral integrity and also hope once again to contribute towards global peace, harmony and development.

I was one of the top IT entrepreneurs of Pakistan whose achievements remain unmatched within the country to this day. Your previous Chairman Lt General Munir Hafeez conspired with my business partners PALPA (Pakistan Airline Pilots Association) to defraud me of my business and my assets. It was not just the question of NAB not ever having the courage to decline PALPAs wish (NAB having a history of succumbing in front of powerful individuals and organisations) it was also an act of personal friendship between the then Chairman NAB and the then President PALPA). In fact, NAB illegally persecuted me and my family and although we were totally destroyed and were eventually given protection by the British Government the brazen contempt of the rule of the law by any standards can be easily assessed by the fact that our case, if it ever was a case, was even outside NABs mandate since public, government or bank funds were not involved. It was nothing more than a malafide intent and action by powerful people against their business partner.

Although, once my assets were forcibly taken over by my partners thanks to your organizations all out support to them, and once I was taken care of NAB did drop all the false cases against me but it has since then still declined to provide justice. The horrific and barbaric treatment of me and my family have appeared in newspapers but without any consequence. http://www.dawn.com/2007/09/03/ebr15.htm & http://www.nation.com.pk/daily/aug-2007/19/columns5.php

Myself and my family continue to live with the trauma. We being your victims in your accountability farce One can only wonder how many more families are out there…

Mr Chairman, Pakistan is now at a cross road where personal integrity is of most importance. You being a civilian (it would be foolish to ask a uniformed Chairman for the same) I urge you to resign as the Chairman NAB and stand up for dignity and for the rule of the law. I stood up for truth against NABs tyranny for three years in spite of my name being on the ECL, with interrogations, threats and torture being a norm and this is the reason I can hold my head high. That I can get up today and declare myself without the fear of there being any skeletons in my cupboard.

Mr Chairman, you are also requested to do the same. The future will soon prove that there is no moral basis of your role. That it is in fact evil and barbaric which no civilized society would tolerate. It may have seemed naive a few months back, but perhaps not anymore to suggest that you also follow in the lines of the Chief Justice and refuse to be a part of an immoral set-up. Also at the same time, I request you to condemn the following initiatives of NAB that can only prolong the suffering of the common man and push them into a primitive state besieged by anarchy. Declare that any effort at accountability that is outside the universally accepted rule of law is sooner or later bound to end up as being corrupt itself. That it is a natural consequence. That subjecting industry leaders and common people to interrogations and torture by army officers who have no qualifications to assess commerce, business, and trade is barbaric. That to keep innocent people on the Exit Control List and in the meantime deprive them of their worldly belongings in the name of accountability and corruption, and not take them to any court of law for periods at times exceeding three years is barbaric.

That to give a false impression of investment security and the rule of the law to foreign and ex-patriot investors is wrong. That it is simply not true same as your governments claims of development and prosperity. That the passionate pleas by the army to foreign governments that they should not provide refuge to Pakistanis abroad is akin to making further efforts to deny them any humane treatment at all and is only an exercise to discourage relief to innocent people who are subjected to tyranny at home and which should lay special emphasis on women and children.

That to out rightly subdue an independent judiciary that can provide redress to a common man against any powerful tyrant is barbaric. That to also restrict the media from taking up collective and individual cases of social injustice is absurd and to make any organisation, tyrant or otherwise, immune from the law of the land ludicrous.” That forcing other institutions to comply with the writ of the executive tantamounts to genocide whether the power is in the hands of good and able men or crooks.Alternately Mr Chairman, if on the other hand, you believe that your role is moral, you are requested in that case to make public the documentation of my case which should state the basis that compelled your organization to take action as they did and that what compelled you to close the case three years later without an attempt to redress the situation although you had by then destroyed the largest e-commerce group of Pakistan. That what in your opinion is the value of accountability that does not lead towards justice….? Mr Chairman, it is my and my familys right to seek justice till the last drop of blood in our bodies, especially more so since it may help to stop NAB from destroying more lives and that too in the name of patriotism and decency…

Consequently, this letter is also being copied to the President of Pakistan and to the High Commissioner of Pakistan to the UK as well as to selective local media to start with…

Mr Chairman, let this also be a small litmus test to discover the true intentions of your government… that is it really trying to turn Pakistan into a socially just state where there will be human rights… where there will not be any moral or financial corruption… or is this exactly what you dont want

Sincerely yours,

Amer Nazir
London


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2 responses to “Request for the resignation of the Chairman NAB”

  1. MB Avatar

    NAB is blind on PML,PPP guys who joined Musharraf, they are silent on people behind Steel Mill case, silent on Sugar crisis and STOCK exchange crisis & are silent on Floor crisis too.

    Heck we are not blind. NAB is just another ARMY puppet to monitor common man & to black mail people for their agendas.

    DOWN with the DICTATORIAL mentality.

  2. amernazir Avatar
    amernazir

    Dear MB,
    I think that if the entire world has woken up to the atrocities in Pakistan today then it is not because of the politicians and the political parties. The fact of the matter is that unfortunately there is no respect for our political institutions.

    What has actually startled the Free World are the stories that are now coming from the common man the injustices meted out to them and their bravery against such tyranny. As has been the practice in the past, the Pakistani media would not carry the story of Mrs Masood and her ordeal, they would have perhaps not been very generous to the lawyer beatings as well which incidentally is not the first time in our history.

    Consequently, the true state of affairs in Pakistan have remained hidden from the world which even in the first place can perhaps best be seen only from the eyes of the ordinary. The Free World has previously had exposure only from the men in guns that have represented Pakistan… the army, the politicians, the terrorists etc… and believe me we do not have a very good image internationally.

    And now, these stories from us, these blogs, have opened the eyes of the Free World who have realised that we are also like them, that we are no different, that we are also human… and that we are under serious constraints…

    The Top-down approach to combat corruption cannot work in Pakistan since most of the TOP lives in glass houses. The only solution lies in a Down-Upward approach. To engage them with our common stories and ask them to either answer or else lose their right to represent us…

    Perhaps, at this point, it would be naive to think that the Chairman NAB would answer me… but what will come next is a detailed blog taking names of Brigadiers and Generals along with evidence of their involvement, perhaps also along with secretly recorded tapes of my torture and interrogations… lets see for how long they will remain silent… and if they still do then this will go to all the NGOs and governments in the world… there is no other way, however we do it, we have to make them answerable…

    I will leave you with another thought and its implications. Take this, one of the directors nominated by PALPA to my business, while he was a director in my Group, was caught red-handed on CCTV at the Dubai Airport for shop lifting. The PK flight he was operating was delayed. The story came in the media and Musharraf ordered his termination but PALPA told Musharraf to go to hell… now how about this…. is it not time that the actual corrupt should be made accountable… that we should finally expose these people to the world so that they learn to behave in the future… this is peoples resistance now is it not… why should we not be the supreme authority one day…