A special ceremony was organized by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Rawalpindi/Islamabad at NAB headquarters, Islamabad, on Thursday to distribute cheques of recovered funds to the victims of the B4U fraud.
The B4U fraud is one of Pakistan’s largest financial scams, operated as an online Ponzi scheme through shell companies by Saif-ur-Rehman and his associates. Billions of rupees were collected from the public with the promise of a 7% monthly return.
NAB initiated an inquiry into the matter on February 5, 2021, after receiving hundreds of complaints from victims and the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP). During the investigation, NAB traced and froze 56 bank accounts, properties, and other assets belonging to the accused. Online data was also downloaded and used to verify victims’ claims.
As a result of NAB’s persistent efforts and legal action, a recovery process for Rs. 7.3 billion was initiated. In the initial phase, Rs. 3.7 billion is being distributed among 17,500 affectees. Of these, 10,000 victims will receive their full amount, while the remaining 7,500 will receive 40% of their amount now, with the remaining 60% to be paid within six months after the disposal of the accused’s properties.
Addressing the ceremony, Chairman NAB reiterated the bureau’s priorities, which include focusing on cases affecting the public at large, recovering 100% of the looted amount from the accused, and returning it to the victims in the shortest possible time.
He also urged the public to exercise caution when investing their hard-earned money in various schemes and to conduct thorough inquiries before making investments.
The Chairman appreciated the efforts and hard work of the NAB Rawalpindi/Islamabad team, whose dedication made the recoveries and disbursement of funds possible despite various challenges in the B4U scam. As a token of appreciation, he announced an Umrah package as an incentive for the entire NAB Rawalpindi team.
It was further announced that, in the future, victims will no longer need to visit NAB offices to claim their compensation, as funds will be directly transferred to their bank accounts. This milestone reflects NAB’s commitment to protecting public interests, recovering looted funds, and restoring public trust.
Earlier, DG NAB (Rawalpindi/Islamabad) Waqar Ahmed Chohan highlighted the efforts of the concerned case officers and briefed the audience on the challenges faced during the recovery of the looted amount from the accused in the B4U scam.
The beneficiaries expressed deep satisfaction and gratitude for NAB’s efforts, stating that they had lost all hope of recovering their savings. They praised the relentless efforts of Chairman NAB, Lt. Gen. (R) Nazir Ahmed, and NAB officials, whose hard work made this recovery and distribution possible.
The ceremony was presided over by Chairman NAB, Lt. Gen. (R) Nazir Ahmed, and attended by Prosecutor General Accountability Syed Ihtesham Qadir Shah, Director Generals, senior NAB officers, and a large number of the general public and scam affectees.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a meeting with Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir in Islamabad during his official visit to the country, discussing regional security and counter-terrorism, the military’s media wing said on Friday.
The Chinese foreign minister arrived in Pakistan late Wednesday night to attend the sixth Pakistan-China Strategic Dialogue on Thursday morning. He also met Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, reaffirming China’s commitment to working with Pakistan to promote regional peace, development, and stability.
Wang—who had earlier met his Afghan counterpart in Kabul on Wednesday—said that China was prepared to support its neighbours on issues concerning their core interests and to firmly oppose external interference in the region, per a Chinese foreign ministry handout. He stressed the need to improve the security dialogue mechanism, deepen law enforcement and security cooperation, strengthen the fight against transnational terrorism, and eliminate conditions that promote extremism.
According to a statement from the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) today, Wang and COAS Munir held discussions focused on regional security, counter-terrorism and matters of mutual interest.
“Both sides reaffirmed their resolve to strengthen the strategic partnership and enhance coordination at regional and international forums.”
Wang reiterated China’s steadfast support for Pakistan’s sovereignty and development, the statement said, adding that COAS Munir expressed gratitude for China’s consistent support for Pakistan.
The meeting concluded with a shared commitment to advance peace, stability, and prosperity in the region, it said.
Pakistan and China share a longstanding strategic partnership that covers trade, energy, defence and infrastructure. Their militaries have built deep mutual trust and cooperation, and both sides agreed to sustain high-level visits while enhancing collaboration in joint training, exercises and military technology.
On August 1, COAS Munir, while speaking at an event marking the 98th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China, stressed that the “enduring partnership” between Islamabad and Beijing will continue to play a pivotal role in regional stability.
Last month, during COAS Munir’s visit to Beijing, the Chinese leadership had lauded the role of the Pakistan Army and hailed it as a “cornerstone of resilience and a vital contributor” for peace in the region.
KARACHI – Sindh Minister for Energy, Planning and Development, Syed Nasir Hussain Shah on Thursday, paid a surprise visit to the Head Office of K-Electric on public complaints and directed KE officials to take immediate and practical measures for the redressal of citizens’ grievances in order to provide relief to the public.
The minister, according to a statement issued here, expressed serious concern over prolonged load-shedding and said that due to rains, tripping of feeders causes severe difficulties for citizens; therefore, KE staff and machinery must remain mobilized on an emergency basis. He instructed KE to prepare a comprehensive plan for timely repair and restoration of feeders and emphasized that complaint centers should be fully activated to promptly resolve public issues. Nasir Shah stated that uninterrupted power supply is a fundamental right of the people while prolonged power outages are not only disrupting the daily lives of citizens but also severely affecting the supply and drainage of water from pumping stations.
KE officials assured the provincial minister that the company would further improve its services and utilize all available resources to ensure timely redressal of complaints.
On this occasion, the Sindh Energy Minister announced that he would once again pay a surprise visit to KE’s Head Office to review the measures taken for addressing public grievances.
WOMEN in Pakistan constitute 48.5 per cent of the population but face systemic disadvantages in education, healthcare and economic participation. To realise the country’s full potential, increasing women’s economic participation is critical.
Pakistan hit rock bottom in the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Gender Gap Index out of 148 countries, with 56.7pc gender parity; it has closed only 2.3pc of the gap since 2006. It ranks below Sudan, Chad, Iran, Guinea and Congo. In South Asia, Bangladesh holds the 24th position, demonstrating a far more favourable gender equality landscape. This is the second year in a row that Pakistan’s gender parity score has declined.
This alone is a damning indictment of the little progress made — despite millions being poured into gender equality initiatives by international development agencies. However, the deeper problem is not lack of funding, but the misuse of a noble narrative to justify wasteful development programming. It should lead to deep introspection about why gender equality efforts keep failing.
Take, for example, the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) initiative with Pakistan’s National Transmission and Despatch Company to increase female participation in technical and leadership roles.
A $182,000 technical assistance grant — part of the broader Power Transmission Enhancement Investment Programme — was awarded to support ‘gender mainstreaming’ through drafting a workplace gender policy, training 20pc of female staff and auditing an internship programme. This reads more like an HR department’s annual plan than a serious development intervention. Any functional organisation with a competent HR team can perform such tasks.
So why is our ailing power sector the testing ground for gender experiments scripted in distant multilateral offices?
The broader problem is a development culture that rewards symbolism over substance.
This is not an isolated case. ADB partnered with the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) to develop a Women Entrepreneurs Finance Code under a Women-Inclusive Financial Sector Development Programme funded through a $5.5m grant and $150m loan.
In June 2025, another $350m loan was approved to support women’s access to finance and provide credit to women-led micro SMEs. The code, launched with fanfare, is merely a declaration of intent to close financing gaps by designating a leader to monitor data and introduce targets.
While gender-responsive finance is a valid policy goal, was this multimillion-dollar donor intervention truly necessary when the SBP already has the legal mandate, institutional capacity and technical expertise to design such policies? Or is this just donor funding chasing headlines, not solutions?
Has the central bank run out of ideas to promote financial inclusion, which it championed until a decade ago when the Economist Intelligence Unit rated Pakistan’s microfinance regulatory framework the best in the world in 2010 and 2011, and the third best in 2013 and 2014? Either way, such supply-driven initiatives only weaken state institutions.
ADB has been involved in Pakistan’s financial sector since 2000, when it launched a $150m microfinance sector development programme to provide financial services to the poor, especially women. The World Bank is also actively involved in gender empowerment projects, focusing on education, economic participation and access to finance.
In March this year, the World Bank approved a $102m loan to enhance access to microcredit and support the resilience of the microfinance sector. ADB and World Bank have extended loans for the same purpose for over 25 years. Similarly, bilateral donors continue to fund gender empowerment initiatives. The UK’s FCDO-owned Karandaaz also invests in profitable banks and established corporates to increase access to SME finance, including for women entrepreneurs.
This unneeded donor exuberance in Pakistan’s most profitable financial sector underscores a lack of interest in addressing core development challenges. These initiatives mainly advance the careers and networks of donor staff, consultants and local counterparts. There is clearly a problem when aid becomes a lucrative industry. It absolves the government of its responsibility to work for the welfare of its citizens. This aid addiction — fostered by international donors — has contributed to institutional decay, economic stagnation and insurmountable debt.
In fact, the actual outcomes of donor programmes implemented over the past decades show deteriorating trends. Pakistan’s credit-to-GDP ratio fell from 27pc in 2008 to 9pc in 2024 — the lowest among emerging countries. Credit remains concentrated in large corporates, with nearly 70pc allocated to manufacturing.
This reflects banks’ disconnect from the broader economy as well as the ineffectiveness of SBP regulation and donor involvement in the financial sector. More troubling is the steady decline in SMEs’ access to finance; their share of total private sector credit dropped from 17pc in the mid-2000s to just 6pc in 2024. The number of SME borrowers also declined from 185,000 in 2007 to 172,000 in 2024. Most financing is directed towards medium enterprises.
The broader problem is a development culture that rewards symbolism over substance. Pakistan’s addiction to foreign aid has fostered a policy environment where any externally funded programme is welcomed without scrutiny. Frivolous projects are designed to please donors, not solve real problems, reflecting waste and abuse. Whether in foreign-funded tax reforms, energy sector financial sustainability projects, or gender mainstreaming campaigns, the pattern is consistent: poor design, poor results.
Tragically, these projects are celebrated with MoUs, photo-ops, and social media hype, while the women they claim to empower remain invisible. This isn’t just inefficient — it’s unethical. Tokenism empowers donor staff, consultants and policymakers, not women; it reduces gender equality to a funding checkbox. Worse, they hide behind bizarre buzzwords like ‘gender-responsive climate finance’ or ‘gender-transformative value chains’ — jargon-masking emptiness.
We must not confuse real gender empowerment with bureaucratic parody. Genuine change means women’s access to education and healthcare, legal rights (especially inheritance), protection from violence, and more women in the workforce — not elite seminars, lavish launches, or pricey consultants churning out reports that nobody reads. Pakistan needs genuine reforms, not donor-driven theatre. And it is time we start calling out the phoney feminism that masquerades as development.
The writer is the author of The Shady Economics of International Aid. He is a former senior adviser of the IMF and ex-chief economist of the SBP.
A LONG-RUNNING controversy over the legitimacy of the 26th Amendment is back in the spotlight. A letter, authored by two of the senior-most justices serving in the Supreme Court, surfaced on Wednesday and was circulated on various social media forums. Unsurprisingly, it quickly became the topic of heated debates on the 26th Amendment and how a controversial piece of legislation enacted under questionable circumstances was allowed to become a fait accompli by the highest court.
The missive, which its authors said had been prompted by a recent decision to publish the minutes of an Oct 31, 2024, meeting of the court’s Practice and Procedure Committee, read like a riposte to two notes recently uploaded to the Supreme Court website and attributed to the chief justice, in which he had explained why challenges to the 26th Amendment were sent to the Constitutional Bench to adjudicate and not presented before a full court.
The controversy is already well known. However, the judges’ letter does shed some fresh light on the chief justice’s decision to set the petitions challenging the amendment before the Constitutional Bench. The judges point out that the meeting of the Practice and Procedure Committee, which decided to place the petitions before a full court bench, had been called in accordance with the relevant law, and the decision could not be ignored or overruled. This much was previously known. However, they assert that the decision was ignored after the chief justice informally and individually met the other judges of the court without their knowledge or involvement. The chief justice later concluded from these meetings that placing the matter before the full court “could dampen the much-needed spirit of collegiality among the judges and further expose the court to public scrutiny”.
That is certainly not a very satisfactory explanation, and the two senior judges appear correct in their indignation over the Committee being overruled. Arbitrary decision-making by past chief justices had been the primary justification for the Supreme Court Practice and Procedure Act, 2023, which subsequently mandated that the Committee decide all crucial issues before the court.
Meanwhile, “The challenges to the 26th Amendment continue to remain pending, and a golden opportunity to decide them […] before the institution as a whole — ie, the full court as it then stood — has been lost, perhaps irretrievably”, the judges regret in the letter. One hopes that this is not so.
The chief justice must reconsider. It has since become clear that this amendment has done substantial harm to both the judiciary and the constitutional order. The Supreme Court must decide this matter as a whole and reaffirm its solidarity in this moment of crisis.
BAJAUR / SOUTH WAZIRISTAN: At least 11 people — including a woman and children — were injured, when heavy clashes erupted between security forces and militants in the Birmal tehsil of Lower South Waziristan district on Thursday morning, officials and residents told Dawn.
The exchange of fire took place near Karmazi Stop, as troops were carrying out an operation to take control of a key militant stronghold. Sources said security forces managed to establish two new posts in the area.
Officials said that several militants initially managed to take refuge inside a nearby structure, but later fled during the clearance operation.
The crossfire left 11 residents injured, who were provided first aid before being shifted to the District Headquarters Hospital in Wana.
Witnesses said intermittent firing continued throughout the day, and residents said the area remained tense throughout the operation, with families confined to their homes for several hours. The Wana-Azam Warsak Road remained closed until around 1pm, disrupting routine life and leaving thousands unable to reach Wana Rustam bazaar.
Several militants believed to be among those killed in Bajaur explosion
Security officials confirmed that the road was later cleared.
Separately, several people were killed an explosion in the remote Charmang region of Bajaur’s Nawagai tehsil.
Although the exact cause of the incident is yet to be established, some sources claimed that a number of militants were among those killed. By some accounts, over two dozen individuals were killed in the explosion, which occurred in a mosque located in a hilly area. The remoteness of the region made it difficult to obtain independent confirmation of the incident.
It may be recalled that Operation Sarbakaf is currently underway in Bajaur, and residents have been evacuated from parts of the district as security forces work to root out a militant presence in the area.
There was no official word from Inter-Services Public Relations, the military’s media wing, on either incident, until going to press.
