ISLAMABAD, Aug 6: Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said on Wednesday that a Swiss court’s finding that former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and her spouse Asif Zardari were guilty of graft was a vindication of the government’s charges of corruption against them.

A Swiss magistrate had found the couple and their Swiss intermediary guilty of money laundering, handed them a six-month suspended jail sentence and ordered them to return nearly $12 million plus a diamond necklace to Pakistan.

“The Swiss verdict proves beyond any shadow of doubt the loot and plunder of Benazir Bhutto and it is a vindication of what President Musharraf has been saying,” the minister told AFP.

Newspapers and analysts declared the Swiss finding a major embarrassment for the former first couple, who have always dismissed corruption allegations against them as politically driven.

“It is going to affect her personal popularity back home and in the long run it may prove to be her albatross,” political commentator Mohammad Afzal Niazi said.

Ms Bhutto’s Geneva-based lawyer Dominique Poncet announced an appeal against the conviction. He told AFP that an appeal would suspend the Swiss investigating magistrates’ decree and could bring the case before a court.—AFP