Chief Justice Pakistan (CJP) Mian Saqib Nisar, on Friday, took suo motu notice of the Axact fake degree issuance scandal case which was first exposed by New York Times in 2015, and further investigated by BBC last week.
“Our heads are hanging in shame,” CJP remarked. “Those who cause defamation to Pakistan will not be allowed to walk scot-free,” he said. Justice Nisar further directed Director-General Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Bashir Ahmed Memon to submit a report within the next 10 days.
He said the scandal has “defamed the country on an international level.” The CJP further stated that news of Axact’s fake degree scandal is making headlines worldwide.
“Cases pertaining to this issue are already present in courts. If this is true then it needs to be investigated, if this is false, then Pakistan needs to defend itself,” he concluded.
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CJP also ordered a date to be set for the hearing of this case.
Background
A recent BBC investigation exposes thousands of UK nationals who bought fake degrees, doctorates, and professional qualifications from Axact; despite common perception that the operation is over, the company continues to flourish.
The investigation reveals that Axact sold almost 300,000 fake degrees worldwide, with confidential documents stating almost 3,000 as being sold to the British. While their identities have not been exposed, the investigation states many of them “held responsible positions.”
The report starts with the interview of an ex-Axact employee given the name ‘Muhammad’, to hide his identity; he later sheds light on the extortion racket Axact ventured into.
Axact, in an official response, calls the investigation ‘defamatory’ further condemning the story “for its baseless accusations and for its substandard, nonfactual and fallacious reporting pertaining to maligning and defamatory false accusations.”
Real fake news
Allen Ezell, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent who paid close attention to the company, says Axact is “at least a billion dollar operation”.
“We live in a credential conscious society around the world, as long as paper has value, someone will counterfeit and sell it. Plus, employers aren’t doing their due diligence in checking out the paper, that’s how the business works.”
Ezell, in the BBC investigation, sheds light on the origin of the company which was founded in 1997 as an Information Technology company, but as the former FBI agent states, while they did tout the IT banner, Axact does not have an IT product and is “simply a ruse”.
A look through the university websites, where Axact offers degrees from, shows a similar format; with names such as Brooklyn Park University and Nixon University, the websites feature stock images of students, buildings and even fake news articles. When the BBC investigator asks Ezell about the websites he says, “they [Axact] started using fake news before fake news came into vogue.”
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“The school doesn’t exist. The faculty doesn’t exist. The curriculum doesn’t exist. They are a master in using social media. They have everything from fake videos to fake press releases. It’s all fake. But they’re good at it.”
In their official response, Axact states the defamatory article “poses a threat to the invaluable IT exports of Pakistan, 65% of which is due to Axact”
Acquitted in 2015
In Pakistan, once the revelations came to light in 2015 through a New York Times report, there was an attempt to shut the massive operation down. On May 27, 2015, the CEO of BOL Network, Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh, along with over a dozen other seniors in the organisation, was arrested. A network of offshore accounts and companies, used to funnel money made from the university websites, were uncovered.
While the accused spent 15 months in jail, a judge later acquitted them due to lack of evidence presented by the prosecution. According to Ezell, it all came down to prosecutors continuously quitting the case, “most probably because they were being threatened.”
In one case, after one of the prosecutors relieved himself from the case due to “personal reasons”, a grenade was thrown into his house. The judge who acquitted the accused later admitted to having taken a bribe of Rs5 million. The judge is currently being investigated.
In 2016, Axact recommenced its operations.
Extortion
In 2017, US authorities prosecuted a senior Axact employee, Umair Hamid, after he pleaded guilty to charges brought against him for his role in the multi-million dollar fake diploma scheme. Axact, however, claimed that “this particular case was of a personal nature that was wrongfully misquoted with respect to Axact in an attempt to further malign the organisation.”
In their investigations, the US authorities revealed that Axact receives almost 5,000 calls a day and raked in more than $130 million. However, the ex-FBI agent states they did not do this solely by selling fake degrees.
“Normally a diploma mill is finished with you when you buy your degree and get your verification to your employer. That’s just the beginning with Axact,” he said shedding light on the extortion techniques Axact started using once the media spotlight was on them.
The ex-FBI agent admitted that he had never seen something like this in any other operation; he explained that Axact would use their database of clients, who had purchased fake degrees, and through the alteration of caller-id, so it seemed like the call was coming from a local embassy or law enforcement, threaten people.
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“They would threaten to deport or arrest you unless you get some additional documents to support the phony diploma you had.”
The ex-Axact employee ‘Muhammad’, who had risen up the ranks of the accused company, told BBC that the organisation realised that in order to keep making money they had to venture into “darker territories.”
He told BBC that he, along with a few others, came up with the idea to move into the whole extortion racket, admitting he knew exactly what he was doing. “For me to actually proclaim that I’m on some moral high ground would be untrue,” adding that they would exchange high fives and make jokes about people squandering their lives.
Just how easy is it to order a fake degree?
One of the BBC reporters calls up the number given on the website of ‘Nixon University’, one of the hundreds of fake universities that Axact distributes degrees of.
A man calling himself ‘Jerry Louis’ explains to the reporter how he will receive a ‘course exemption degree’, which converts his professional experience into a qualification from a US based university. “Except he never asks me what my qualification is,” says the BBC reporter.
‘Jerry’ runs him through the courses he will be taking and states he will also receive approval from the United States government.
“So these are the courses it will say I have taken but I won’t actually have to take them?”, asks the reporter. ‘Jerry’ answers in the affirmative. In ten minutes he has ordered a degree from Nixon University which would cost him approximately $3600 dollars.
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Original news : https://tribune.com.pk/story/1611033/1-cjp-takes-suo-motu-notice-axact-fake-degrees-scandal/