In Pakistan, NAB seeks to lower corruption case threshold to 50 million rupees — Dawn

Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has asked the government to lower the statutory threshold for considering corruption cases from 500 million to 50 million Pakistani rupees. The agency’s chairman, retired Lieutenant General Nazir Ahmed Butt, said this during a meeting with the media, Dawn reports.

According to Butt, the current restriction prevents the bureau from taking up cases in which the amount of alleged corruption is less than 500 million rupees. NAB proposed reducing this threshold tenfold, to 50 million rupees, so that the agency can investigate significant corruption cases.

Statements on the return of land

The NAB chairman also said that the agency had returned to the state land seized by other persons. Among it, he said, were 235,622 kanals of Pakistan Railways land. Butt estimated the value of this returned land at 6.78 trillion rupees.

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NAB Director General for Operations Amjad Aulakh said that in the third quarter of 2026, the bureau returned state land worth 9.18 trillion rupees. According to him, the total value of assets returned by NAB since 2023 amounts to 11.524 trillion rupees, while the aggregate value of land and other assets returned in 2026 is 14.6 trillion rupees.

Further areas of work

Aulakh also said that the bureau transferred 908 million rupees to the bank accounts of 4,280 affected persons. Butt named the detection of corruption in the energy sector, the Evacuee Trust Property Board, state-owned enterprises, and the mining and minerals sectors as NAB’s further areas of work.

Railways Secretary Syed Mazhar Ali Shah confirmed to Dawn that NAB had returned significant areas of seized land. According to him, the authorities are developing a procedure for selling the returned assets, and the proceeds are planned to be directed toward future projects and the modernization of the railway and its services.