ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has urged the government to review the law under which the bureau could not take up corruption cases involving an amount of less than Rs500m.

This was stated by NAB Chairman retired Lt Gen Nazir Ahmed Butt during a recent media interaction with other senior officials of the bureau.

`We have demanded of the government to reduce this threshold to Rs50m so that NAB can lay its hands on individuals involved in mega corruption cases,` he said during the briefing arranged to inform the media about the recent successes of the accountability watchdog.

The NAB chairman claimed to have recovered state land worth trillions ofrupees from encroachers, including 235,622 kanals of Pakistan Railways (PR).

He said the bureau was also concentrating on the cases of money laundering, criticising Western countries for not investigating the source of money being invested by Pakistani diaspora in their countries.

`We have learnt that more than 147,000 Pakistani students were staying abroad, with heavy fees being paid by their parents and no authority in the West asking them about the source of money,` Lt-Gen Nazir Ahmed Butt said.

He further said a committee had been formed to address complaints from investors, who believed they were not receiving adequate protection.

Recovery claims According to NAB`s Director General (Operation) Amjad Aulakh, the bureau had retrieved state land worth Rs9.18 trillion in the third quarter of the current year, taking the total recovery of the bureau to Rs11.524 trillion since 2023.

According to him, due to NAB`s sustained initiatives, the year 2026 has so far witnessed an aggregate recovery of valuable state lands and other assets worth Rs14.6trillion.

He further said the bureau distributed Rs908 million to 4,280 affected people through deposits in their bank accounts.

He was of the view that after the recovery of 235,622 kanals of PR land, the organisation will soon become self-reliant and will be able to launch mega rail projects.

According to the NAB chairman, the value of recovered PR land is Rs6.78tr.

The recovery has been made at a time when the government was seeking foreign loans for executing the ML-1 project, under which an additional rail track will be laid from Karachi to Peshawar.

The NAB chairman said after making a record recovery of PR land, the bureau`s next target was to unveil corruption in the power sector, Evacuee Trust Property Board, state-owned enterprises, mines and minerals.

Secretary Railways Syed Mazhar Ali Shah while talking to Dawn confirmed that NAB had retrieved huge encroached land.

He said a proper and foolproof procedure was being devised to sell recovered assets so that the money could be spent on future projects and upgradation of railways and its services.