Practice Area

NAB & Anti-Corruption Defense

We defend holders of public office, business owners, and their companies at every stage of a National Accountability Bureau proceeding — call-up notice, inquiry, investigation, reference, and trial. We also take the case upward, to the High Courts and the Supreme Court, where NAB matters are most often finally decided.

A NAB case is an arc, and the defense must be planned for the whole of it. The response filed at inquiry becomes an exhibit at trial; the ground not taken at bail is harder to take on appeal; the interview given casually at the Bureau is read back, word by word, years later. We therefore decide the theory of the defense at the call-up notice, not at the charge, and every document we file is written for the last court that will read it.

The law itself has been the battlefield in recent years. The National Accountability (Amendment) Acts of 2022 raised the monetary threshold for NAB's jurisdiction to five hundred million rupees, shortened physical remand, and reworked the settlement and bail provisions; the Supreme Court struck parts of the amendments in 2023 and restored them on intra-court appeal in 2024. A significant share of our work is jurisdictional — establishing which regime governs a given case, and whether NAB should hold it at all.

The positions described here are stated as of mid-2026. Thresholds, remand periods, and the allocation of cases between NAB, the FIA, and the provincial establishments have all moved within recent memory, and we verify each against the statute book as it stands on the day of filing.

How We Serve

A call-up notice under section 19 of the National Accountability Ordinance 1999 is the cheapest place to end a NAB case. We prepare the written response and the accompanying record with the care of a trial brief, because if the matter proceeds, that is what it becomes.

We resist warrants of arrest, appear at physical-remand hearings, and pursue bail — before the accountability court where the amended Ordinance permits it, and by constitutional petition under Article 199 where it does not. The bail jurisdiction in NAB cases has shifted with the 2022 amendments and the Supreme Court litigation that followed, and we confirm the current position at the outset of every case.

We conduct the trial itself: the charge, the prosecution evidence, the cross-examination of the investigating officer, and the accused's statement under section 342 of the Code of Criminal Procedure 1898. NAB cases are won on the record of the prosecution's own witnesses more often than on defense evidence.

The Ordinance's settlement provisions under section 25 — voluntary return and plea bargain — have been narrowed and litigated since 2022, and each carries consequences, including disqualification from public office, that clients tend to discover too late. We advise on whether to settle, when, and at what real cost.

We file and defend appeals against accountability-court judgments before the High Courts under section 32 of the Ordinance, and carry the case to the Supreme Court of Pakistan where the point warrants it. Where the process itself is the abuse — a reference without jurisdiction, a matter below the monetary threshold — we go directly to the High Court under Article 199 of the Constitution.

Cases outside NAB's net are pursued by the provincial anti-corruption establishments under the Prevention of Corruption Act 1947 and tried by special judges anti-corruption. We defend these matters with the same playbook at smaller scale, including transfers, bail, and quashment in the High Courts.

Representative Matters