Pakistan

FIA raid: Even before starting, probe changes hands

Corporate Crimes Circle given charge of investigation into multimillion dollar scandal

Faisal Hussain May 20, 2015

senate takes up issue says axact 039 s management must provide explanation photo courtesy forbes

Senate takes up issue, says Axact's management must provide explanation. PHOTO COURTESY: FORBES

KARACHI: The Axact scandal has not only earned a bad name for Pakistan internationally but has also put the future of hundreds of thousands of educated Pakistanis working abroad at stake.

The damning disclosure by The New York Times has unmasked the ugly face of the Axact management. The American newspaper has proved that the management of the Pakistani software company was selling their country and betraying Pakistan in the shape of fake degrees.

‘Axact-gate’ has emerged as the biggest educational scam of the world. And unfortunately, a Pakistani company is involved in it. The Axact owners have brought disgrace to Pakistan, which cannot be washed away until the criminals are punished. Pakistani agencies reacted to the NYT exposé and members of FIA’s Cybercrime Unit raided the Axact offices in Karachi, Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

However, Cybercrime Unit’s investigators had just started confiscating records from the Axact offices when they started receiving calls from their high-ups who reportedly stopped them from taking any action and asked them to keep their mouths shut. They were told that a team of the Corporate Crimes Circle would arrive and take charge of investigation.

The Corporate Crimes team did arrive and with its arrival the whole scene changed. The new team was friendly with the Axact staff and started gossiping with them. The Cyber Crime team was surprised to see this. They could just leave the place helplessly, as ordered by their high-ups.

The ‘glitter of the Axact’ had started working, it can be easily concluded. It changed the tone of the FIA investigation. Though the Axact owner has been summoned, it is expected that the meeting will be a friendly sitting over a cup of tea and the criminals will be cleared of blame.

The damage that the company has done to Pakistan cannot be compensated. The responsible persons should be punished. Otherwise, the persons working with Pakistani qualifications as well as the whole nation will suffer.
(TRANSLATION BY ARSHAD SHAHEEN)

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

COMMENTS (3)

Neutral101 | 9 years ago | Reply Unfortunate to see that reporters are free to write any nonsense and major news papers will publish them. First of all, the claimed universities issuing degrees are not Pakistani universities. Second, based upon a NYT article (by a journalist who was deported from Pakistan for his anti-Pakistan reporting and activities), no one can be arreted immediately. Still, Govt. of Pakistan is investigating. If any crime commited, there will be arrests. If no crime found, NYT will be getting sued for a huge amount along with some trator Pakistani media like GEO.

Zahid Islam | 9 years ago | Reply Although those in power pretend to be shocked by the scandal, the problem has been endemic in Pakistan since the last ten years or so. Genuine teachers are appalled at the academic fakes moving around private and public universities who do not even know what their theses are about. All their dissertations and so-called articles are plagiarised from websites or written by ghost writers (with 'A' Level certification at the most), and printed in journals hardly ever read by anyone. While working as a content writer some years ago, here is what I noticed: 1) From the names of clients/customers, I gathered that the majority were either from the Middle-East or from China, Vietnam or Thailand, who themselves knew very little English but were studying in colleges of the West. 2) One medical student with an Arab name wanted me to re-write an entire technical and bookish chapter on male specific surgical procedures involving vasectomy and prostatitis in a matter of hours. The irony is that well-heeled students of rich parents are now trying to get degrees from first world countries by means of term papers and dissertations by someone from a much-maligned third-world country like Pakistan. An even more unethical practice is the insistence of these outsourcing companies in Pakistan to force their employees to adopt Christian names so that customers may believe that they are indeed chatting with somebody in the USA, UK, Canada, or Australia.

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