FIA probe: Bureaucracy jumps in to bail out Axact

Sources say it is likely for the powerful bureaucracy to become successful in rendering the investigation ineffective

KARACHI:

The direction of Federal Investigation Agency’s probe into the Axact scandal has changed surprisingly, as the bureaucracy has been rendering the investigation ineffective.

Two very different attitudes were seen during the FIA raids on the Axact offices in Karachi and twin-cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

In Karachi, the responsibilities of the investigation were taken from the Cybercrime Circle and handed over to the Corporate Crime Circle. The raid was only cosmetic, as no effort was seen to confiscate the records of the webhosting servers of the company.

The raiding team head claimed that a filter had been installed and the company would now be unable to make any changes in their records.

Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar had tasked the FIA with investigating into the New York Times report that claimed Axact was involved in illegal activities.

Several employees were detained in Islamabad and computers and other documentary records seized from the Karachi and Islamabad offices. When the FIA team tried to enter the Axact headquarters in Karachi, it was initially faced with resistance from the staff.

The team that comprised IT experts inspected the data on the computers and decided to take the servers with them, but, according to sources, a call from Islamabad to the head of the team made them decide leaving the office without the records.

“The bureaucracy in Islamabad decided to ignore the directives of the interior minister and to handle the issue in their own way,” said a source.

A meeting of the committee investigating into the Axact scandal, led by FIA Sindh Director Shahid Hayat, took a strange decision: the case of the fake degrees will be registered at FIA’s Corporate Crime Circle while experts of the Cybercrime Circle will assist the investigation.

Once again, a four-member FIA team visited the Axact office and served a legal notice to the owner of the company Shoaib Sheikh, summoning him a day later.

Sources said the FIA team did not make any effort to seize the computer servers, which were initially identified for confiscation.

Corporate Crime Circle Additional Director Kamran Attaullah said the FIA had installed a filter so that the data on the computers could not be altered. When he was asked to provide details of the filter, he said he was not an expert and, therefore, did not have much knowledge about it.

A source claimed that this was a deliberate attempt on the part of the FIA to give the Axact staff an opportunity to delete or alter any data that might incriminate them.

“It is very likely that the powerful bureaucracy will once again become successful in rendering the investigation ineffective. The interior minister will not be informed as in past cases like the Trade Development Authority,” added the source.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 20^th, 2015.