In a paper on “The Impact of Corruption in Post Conflict Environments on Contracting Agencies”, Mark Carruthers of Centerra says that corruption prospers at all levels in our society. He defines it as (1) Systemic – as an integral part of the economy (2) Political – Corrupt interaction between high level officials and the private…
The majority of the corruption cases the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) tackled when it first came into being in Oct 1999 pertained to misdemeanor in the nationalized financial institutions. About 80% of the cases involved loans and/or advances on flimsy grounds and against very little (or mostly fake) collateral. NAB’s first major successes therefore was…
Dear Readers, Pakistan established relations with Afghanistan immediately after its independence in 1947 but because of issues related to the Durand Line the relations started deteriorating. Later in the 1970s due to the Soviet-Afghan war and then the Taliban insurgency after 9/11, relations soured up. In the recent past too there have been plenty of…
A fictional depiction of true facts, “Exodus” by author Leon Uris is a moving account of the struggle of Jewish refugees escaping persecution and discrimination in Europe to get to Israel (Middle East) after World War 2. Sixty years later history is repeating itself but in the reverse direction. Migrants from the Middle East and…
We are in the state we are in is because we have been compromising on targetting corruption, now it has become a part of our lives. The penetration is so deep that it has subverted society to the extent that the corrupt do not hide their corruption anymore. In fact they flout their newly acquired…
Launching the unmitigated disaster that was “Operation Gibraltar” in 1965 it was criminal negligence not to anticipate a far wider Indian response than the conflict being only being restricted to Kashmir. Even though after Rann of Kutch in May, formations like 7 Div, etc had moved out of their peacetime locations, our military hierarchy were…
Former Federal Minister and close aide/confidante of PPP leader Asif Ali Zardari, Dr Asim Hussain was remanded for 90 days by an Anti-Terrorism Court under the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 because of what the Rangers described was “credible information about his involvement in terrorism-related activity and embezzlement of funds”. Asim soon started coughing out a roomful…
On an election petition filed by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) alleging poll rigging in NA-125 in Lahore, an election tribunal decided in May this year that the irregularities were serious enough to cancel the constituency’s 2013 election results. Terming it null and void, the tribunal de-seated PML (N)’s Khawaja Saad Rafique, the Federal Minister for Railways….
Dear Readers, A quick glance into our short history will show that barring a few honourable exceptions, we were unable to produce a truly capable and credible leader who could represent this nation’s interests. Over the decades, partly because of continued military dictatorships and partly because of the shenanigans of our politicians, Pakistan lost what…
The sick loan portfolio in the banks started to swell as early as the mid-eighties, the same was not publicly acknowledged in the banks’ books. Throughout the nineties, huge lending decisions were taken in Islamabad instead of being analysed threadbare in the banks’ boardrooms by professional bankers. Handpicked persons having no professional background were placed…
