A few days after the ouster of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government through a no-confidence motion, National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Javed Iqbal in a ‘surprising move’ on Friday reappointed Shahzad Saleem as NAB Lahore director general.

In December last year, the NAB chairman had transferred and posted NAB Lahore director general Shahzad Saleem as head of the bureau’s Awareness & Prevention (A&P) Division based in Islamabad. It is worth mentioning that Shahzad remained in the headlines in recent years for proactively pursuing alleged corruption cases of former prime minister and PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif, his brother and then Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif and their family members.

According to a spokesperson, the NAB chairman has directed Shahzad Saleem to assume the office with an immediate effect and a notification from NAB Headquarters has also been issued in this regard. “Shahzad Saleem’s ‘remarkable’ performance during his earlier tenure as DG NAB Lahore from April 2017 to Dec 2021 is knowingly been the reason for his transfer on such an important region of NAB,” he added.

The story was originally published in Business Recorder on April 16, 2022.