ISLAMABAD, Aug 5: A Swiss judge has found former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, her husband Asif Ali Zardari and a Swiss lawyer guilty of money laundering and receiving bribes from two Swiss firms nine years ago.

Ms Bhutto, Mr Zardari and Jens Schlegelmilch were guilty of arranging an illegal 6 per cent commission or “bribe” worth $12 million for awarding a pre-shipment customs inspection contract to Swiss firms Societe Generale de Surveillance and Cotecna, according to a copy of the judgment obtained by AFP on Tuesday.

Swiss investigating magistrate Daniel Devaud said his inquiry had established that Ms Bhutto and Mr Zardari were paid by SGS and Cotecna “as a result of their unfair management of the public interests of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.”

With Mr Schlegelmilch, they had laundered over $11.99 million in two Swiss bank accounts, the judge wrote in the judgment, which was dated July 30.

He awarded Ms Bhutto and Mr Zardari a suspended six months prison sentence and fined them $50,000 each.

The former first couple were ordered to repay the Pakistan government the full 11,997,423 dollars. The judge also ordered them to forfeit to Islamabad a diamond necklace purchased by Ms Bhutto with funds from the Swiss accounts for 117,000 British pounds in August 1997.

As it is a suspended judgment and the court has given Ms Bhutto right of appeal, therefore, she could not be apprehended till final disposal of her appeal.

The court intimated the Swiss government about the decision on Monday.

A court in Pakistan convicted the couple in the same case in 1999, but the Supreme Court overturned the finding two years later, citing political bias, and ordered a re-trial by an accountability court.

The couple have been fighting a host of corruption charges since Ms Bhutto was dismissed a second time from power in 1996 on accusations of graft. They have long insisted all the charges were politically motivated by their rivals.

Mr Zardari has only one standing conviction against him, awarded in September for receiving commissions in a contract involving the Pakistan Steel Mills. He was sentenced to seven years jail.—Agencies