Mehtab Pirzada

ISLAMABAD: National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Lt Gen (retd) Nazir Ahmed on Wednesday said that new real estate reforms will be introduced within two months, aiming to overhaul regulatory practices.

“The reforms will be presented before the federal cabinet for approval,” he said during an informal media briefing, adding that the existing file system would be abolished after implementation.

The NAB chairman said that full responsibility would rest with real estate developers under the proposed changes.

The NAB chief added that cases against members of parliament were still ongoing, but the bureau no longer issued press releases on such matters.

He said that NAB had referred several cases to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and anti-corruption departments, while emphasising that suspects deserved the same respect as investigators.

“The current NAB does not agree with what NAB did in the past,” he added.

Lt Gen (retd) Ahmed also criticised the International Monetary Fund’s diagnostic report on Pakistan as “completely baseless”, saying the IMF would never grant a “clean chit” to any country.

Last year, the IMF’s Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Assessment (GCDA) warned that persistent corruption and weak institutions continue to undermine the country’s economic development even as it stabilises under an Extended Fund Facility (EFF).