ISLAMABAD - Swiss authorities have issued former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and her husband Asif Zardari with a six months’ suspended sentence and fined them 50,000 dollars each in a graft case, their lawyer announced here Tuesday.
“The Swiss Investigation Officer Mr Devaud has on July 31…passed an order pronouncing six months of suspended sentence and a fine of 50,000 dollars each” to Bhutto and Zardari, lawyer and senator Farooq Naek said in a statement.
Naek said the order, the outcome of a five year inquiry into a corruption case involving Swiss firm SGS, was communicated to the Swiss government on Monday.
The case concerns allegations that Bhutto and Zardari received millions of dollars in private commissions by awarding SGS a contract to inspect imports during her second term in power from 1993 to 1996.
A Pakistani court convicted the couple over the case in 1999, but the conviction was overturned two years later by the Supreme Court, the country’s highest judicial body.
The court ruled the 1999 conviction was biased, instructed one of the convicting judges to resign and ordered a re-trial by the state accountability court.
Bhutto, who has lived in self-imposed exile in London and Dubai since 1998, refused to return to Pakistan for the scheduled re-trial last year and was convicted of absconding.
Naek slammed the Swiss investigator’s finding as “malafide and politically motivated.”
Interesting… independent & neutral (you can’t get get any more neutral than Switzerland) inquiry proves the age-old allegations that the Bhuttos are corrupt politicians!
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*Originally posted by nomaan: *
now she will say that the Swiss are in cahoots with the pakistani government, and she is innocent..
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Of course she is innocent; evidence was planted by big bad ISI. The darn notorious bad Paki intelligence agency even managed to corrupt the Swiss. With such long wide spread tanticles there is no hope for mankind.
Now she will say that the Pakistani govt secretly owns and controls the swiss government and the swiss justice system. And that Swiss judges are on the payroll of the ISI :)
Can somebody please slap this bitch and tell her to get the hell away from our country. She has already looted our country so much. We won't allow any more looting.
[QUOTE] Originally posted by Pak Brave Heart: *
**Can somebody please slap this **** and tell her to get the hell away from our country. She has already looted our country so much. We won't allow any more looting. **
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hahha... Thank you for posting this thread, MS. Best news i have heard this week. The only negative point is that Mr & Mrs Corruption were fined too little (only $50,000 each)...but still, it's a start.
yeah atleast one can say they are both convicted criminals. i mean not that they were not before but ppl always argued against their convictions in pakistan, now you have an impartial country convicting them as well.
These officials conducting the inquiry were not Government officials, but were privately hired. I dont know who hired them though. He also claims that this inquery is baseless and that is the reason why he did not come accross this piece of news in any Pakistani newspapers, I too didnt find this news in the papers.
It was not a ruling from the Pakistani courts. Its a fact that the Pakistani high court decision was concocted by Nawaz Sharif himself by issuing orders, and it was proven in the Musharraf regime that it was a biased decision, so the Supreme Court overturned the decision, and ordered the independent inquiry to be carried out in Pakistan.
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*Originally posted by Spock: *
and that is the reason why he did not come accross this piece of news in any Pakistani newspapers, I too didnt find this news in the papers. .
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The disappointing aspect is that Benazir is Oxford educated and could have contributed a lot to Pakistani politics if she wasn't such an airhead. The situation is different from the MMA who are basically uneducated narrow-minded buffoons who it's difficult to expect much from anyway.
Of course she is innocent; evidence was planted by big bad ISI. The darn notorious bad Paki intelligence agency even managed to corrupt the Swiss. With such long wide spread tanticles there is no hope for mankind.
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yea yea they also setup accounts in past dates in Swiss banks! and fill up with money even before NS came last time into power! swiss authorities are as impartial as their country image. by not accepting this mean whatever BB does is right and cant do wrong doing?????
whynot accept and ask forgiveness from PAkistani people open heartedly?
evidence can be planted in pak easily but its hard to bribe the swiss impartiallity. though this will drive funds away from swiss banks people like BB from all over the world will think twice now!
Please dont get offended but thats too much loyality towards BB!
our problem is corruption and illetracy ? People who are corrupt are still there lining up their bank accounts. When regimes change in Pak they bring their own set of corrupt leaders or retrains the old ones to dance to a new tune. In the end the country still bleeds !!!
This time around with Musharraf, we initially thought that finally the corrupt leaders will be caught, some did get caught initially, but then later on, as time passed, the old corrupt leaders were taught a new dance - In the end the country is still bleeding !!!
Although I do not condone the looting carried out by BB, I still maintain that Nawaz Sharif & Co. were a lot worse for pakistan. They looted from the people of Pakistan (Qarz utaro mulk - bachao campaign, Coop societies, Foreign accounts etc.) from the Treasury (Loan defaults, Customs Frauds etc) and tried their best to bankrupt the country through ill thought out plan (Yellow cabs, Motorway etc). BB took kickbacks from outside companies which did not affect the public. But as the PML is always protected by the army, they get better Press than the PPP and they seem to get away with everything whereas BB gets hammered by everyone.
Having said all that though I hope BB and her cohorts decide to quit Pakistan for ever - but I can see her coming back at some stage though!!
Why couldnt Pakistani Justice system do it themselves. We need the swiss govt to tell us that our own leader was corrupt and should be fined? That is ridiculous.
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*Originally posted by fayax: *
Why couldnt Pakistani Justice system do it themselves. We need the swiss govt to tell us that our own leader was corrupt and should be fined?
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That is a million dollar question my friend and I won't even bother to answer for obvious reasons :)