ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court finally granted bail to anchorperson Dr Shahid Masood on Monday against a surety bond of Rs500,000. He is under trial on an allegation of embezzling an amount of Rs38 million when he was managing director of the Pakistan Television.

A two-judge Supreme Court bench, headed by Justice Manzoor Ahmed Malik, accepted Dr Masood’s bail application after the prosecution, as well as the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), failed to convince the court that during his tenure as PTV MD, Dr Masood embezzled Rs38 million while acquiring media rights from the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) in 2008.

The agreement was allegedly carried out with a fake company — Messers International Sports Solution (ISS), the FIA stated, adding that the deal caused a loss of millions of dollars to PTV since it failed to win a similar contract for PCB media rights from 2008 to 2013.

Additional Attorney General Sajid Ilyas Bhatti and the prosecutors could not convince the court that Dr Masood or his relatives had any association with Deans Creation or ISS, to whom the contracts were awarded.

Published in Dawn, January 29th, 2019