Pakistan's leading television network ARY Digital today said that it has taken over the management of ARY Digital, whose top executives were arrested for their alleged involvement in a degrees scam by an IT firm here, accused of making millions of dollars through a global network of fictitious universities.
The Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ary, Salman Iqbal, announced at a ceremony that the BOL TV channel would be launched in three weeks' time.
The ARY CEO said that clearing the pending salaries and unpaid dues of BOL employees would be a key priority. He also vowed to keep the remuneration packages offered to BOL employees as promised.
"The driving force behind this decision was our mission to try and ease the difficulties faced by media persons," said Iqbal.
He said, "I have created Pakistan's largest TV channel - so I thought why not take that dream to BOL."
"We are not here to start any confrontation, our reasons are purely aimed to benefit the journalistic community," said Iqbal.
The Pakistan media scene was shaken in May when the Federal Investigating Agency arrested the chief executive and other top officials of the BOL television network group for fraud, cheating and money laundering in their sister company, Axact which claimed to deal in IT, software development and education.
The Axact's officials were charged with defrauding thousands of people through a fake degrees scam while Customs and Tax officials also swooped on them and BOl TV for tax evasion and money laundering allegations.
The arrests and subsequent orders by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority to the management of Bol Television in May to stop their test transmission and launch until the directors of their parent company Axact were exonerated from charges of fraud and money laundering caused a furore in Pakistan's media industry.
It also put the future of the ambitious BOL television network and the launch of its channels in great uncertainty.
As top media personalities resigned and left the yet to launched channel which had claimed to offer a new lifestyle for the Pakistani journalists, there was also talk about around 4,000 employees of the channel not being paid any salaries as the government agencies had frozen and seized all accounts of the owners and stake holders.
Axact's directors are currently facing charges in the wake of a massive fake degree scandal which was exposed by The New York Times.
A report in the NYT accused the firm of running a network of websites for phoney universities as part of an elaborate scheme that generated tens of millions of dollars annually.
