Pakistan Broadcasters Association (PBA) has said that it on behalf of all electronic media industry of Pakistan, expresses satisfaction over the step finally taken by PEMRA to revoke the licenses of Bol News and Bol Entertainment. PBA said that it wants to further specifically point out that Axact, the parent company of Bol, has been prosecuted in USA by US Justice Department and an Axact employee has confessed to being part of a 140 million dollar fake degree scam run through Axact's Pakistan offices. And that evidence against Axact has also been handed over to the FIA by FBI.

PBA has also earlier raised many important questions through a published Ad and had asked PEMRA and Government to probe if Axact channel had customs receipts and NOC from PEMRA for any of its broadcasting equipment that all other PBA members had to get as per law.

It also said the PBA hopes that a proper inquiry would now be initiated to investigate the crimes committed, laws broken and how criminal money was generated, brought into Pakistan and used to finance media channels like this. This whole ugly scam has brought a bad name to Pakistan and to Pakistan's IT and Media Industry.

"PBA believes that freedom of speech is a critical element of any democracy. However unscrupulous elements entering media in the guise of that freedom to whiten their black money and to blackmail the judiciary, bureaucracy, government and media to hide their own crimes, must NOT be allowed. On world press freedom day, this is a setback for those, who in the guise of freedom of speech were trying to get away with one of the most audacious international level criminal scams in the history of Pakistan," the press release concluded.-PR

Copyright Business Recorder, 2017