A Swiss magistrate has given former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and her husband Asif Ali Zardari a six- month suspended sentence and fined them $50,000 each in a corruption case, officials said yesterday.

The magistrate issued the order on July 31 after a five-year inquiry into a case involving allegations that Swiss firm SGS paid millions of dollars in kickbacks to the couple in return for import cargo inspection contract during Benazir's 1993-96 government.

An accountability court in Pakistan convicted the couple in the case in 1999 but two years later the Supreme Court quashed the conviction. The top court ruled that the trial judge was biased and ordered a retrial of Benazir, who has lived in self-imposed exile in London and Dubai since 1998, did not return to Pakistan for the scheduled retrial last year and was convicted of absconding by the accountability court.

The couple's lawyer Farooq Naek confirmed an order pronouncing the suspended sentence and fines had been issued by Swiss inquiry magistrate Devaud and communicated to the Swiss government on Monday. In a statement Naek bitterly flayed the order. "The investigation officer's order is illogical, unreasonable, inconsistent with law and is politically motivated."

He said Benazir and Zardari, who is in jail in Pakistan since November 1996, were consulting legal advisors to decide whether to file a representation against the order.

Under the Swiss law, once a representation is filed before the General Attorney, the order of the Investigation Officer will be quashed automatically, the lawyer said.

"During all these years that Devaud was supposedly investigating the case and until his last day in office no notices were served either on Benazir or on Senator Zardari even though the latter was in jai and within reach," Naek said.

Naek said while no notices were served on the respondents the Swiss investigation officer however had been in correspondence all the past five years with the Pakistan government, providing "grist to the media trial" of Benazir and Zardari.

The investigation officer should have submitted the file to the Swiss Attorney General but he chose to bypass this procedure and hurriedly announced his order apparently because he was not sure whether the General Attorney would even find the case worth submission to a court, Naek said.

"Under the Swiss law it is the General Attorney who, after satisfying himself that prima facie a case exists, forwards it to a court of law where the trial takes place under normal legal procedure involving notices to the parties and cross examination of witnesses."

He said the investigation officer announced his order without reference to the General Attorney and without serving notices on Benazir and Zardari.

Naek said Benazir's lawyer in Switzerland, Peter Haster, had met the Swiss Federal Attorney General, Carla Ded Ponte, and the latter had "confirmed that Bhutto has no accounts in Swiss banks."

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said the Swiss magistrate's decision was a "historic" one and it "proves beyond doubt that they (Benazir and Zardari) are corrupt," the minister said in remarks released through the official media.

Sheikh Rashid claimed the Swiss inquiry had led to the discovery of 61 new accounts of the former prime minister in foreign banks and Pakistani authorities had started an investigation.