Axact investigation can take up to 10 to 15 days: FIA

FIA sends all confiscated electronic devices to forensic labs for investigation

KARACHI: Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) officials and a team of their cyber- crime wing arrived at the Axact Karachi office on Wednesday morning to investigate the equipment in the premises, Express News reported.

Read: FIA takes Axact employees into custody, seizes equipment following Nisar’s orders

Just a day after 45 Axact employees were from their offices following a raid by the FIA, on Wednesday all electronic devices which were confiscated were sent to forensic labs for further investigation, earlier during the day.

The FIA team at Axact’s Karachi head office is copying data from the two main servers which operate all of the software company’s activities worldwide. Further, it is reported that they are gathering data on Axact’s business deals and transactions.

Addressing the media during the ongoing investigation, FIA deputy director Kamran Attaullah said, “We will not seal the office but our team will stay here for 24 hours till the inquiry is complete.”

Attaullah said they are investigating four departments of the software company.

“It can take up to 10 to 15 days to collect data,” he added.

Claiming the inquiry is in its early stages and the results of the forensic tests have not yet been released.

“We are not in a position to comment right now.”

“If there is evidence then we will register a case and start inquiry, till we don’t have anything on record we cannot say anything,” the FIA deputy director added.

Further, he clarified Axact’s CEO Shoaib Shaikh has not recorded his statement as yet.

FBR has asked FIA for Axact’s records to probe into the company’s alleged tax evasions.

Read: Tax evasion?: Axact CEO paid Rs26 in income tax

Further, Sindh Revenue Board (SRB) has sent a notice to Axact to submit tax records within seven days, according to a SRB spokesperson.

Further, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar will hold a press conference today regarding investigations into the matter.

Meanwhile, a FIA team has been ordered to conduct a search operation at Axact office in Islamabad again today. All executives of the company in the twin cities have been summoned on Thursday.

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.

Read: FIA probe: Bureaucracy jumps in to bail out Axact

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.

PTI takes up issue in Punjab Assembly

Meanwhile, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has decided to take up the matter of the software agency in the Punjab Assembly.

Further, the opposition leader of the Punjab Assembly has stated that he will speak 'out of turn' on the matter.

He also submitted a resolution in the Punjab Assembly expressing his anger on how a company was illegally operating in Pakistan since the past 10 years.

"It's because of issues like these that our country's image gets ruined," he said.

Read: Why I left Axact? The inside picture

The raids came shortly after Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar ordered FIA to probe into the special report published by The New York Times alleging the software company was earning tens of millions of dollars by selling fake degrees around the world.

The report stated that according to former insiders, company records and a detailed analysis of its websites, Axact’s main business has been to take the centuries-old scam of selling fake academic degrees and turn it into an Internet-era scheme on a global scale.