A technology company that billed itself as a Pakistani success story has been raided by police investigating allegations it is a front for the industrial-scale sale of fake degrees from non-existent universities.
Officials from Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency swooped on offices belonging to Axact – which claims it is the “world’s leading IT company” – in Karachi, Rawalpindi and Islamabad.
The raids, which saw computer equipment seized and staff held for questioning, followed a report in the New York Times which alleged that Axact makes millions of dollars from selling bogus degrees.
The company was accused of running hundreds of websites purporting to belong to colleges with a passing similarity to the names of prestigious institutions, such as the universities of “Barkley” and “Columbiana”.
According to the New York Times, actors were used to play the parts of academics and students in videos on some of the websites.
Axact employees operating a boiler room-style operation also allegedly posed as US officials to bully potential customers into paying thousands of dollars for worthless accreditation.
The allegations prompted interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan to order the FIA to investigate if the company “is involved in any such illegal work which can tarnish the good image of the country in the world”, a statement said.
If fraud is proven the scandal has the potential not only to bring down the high-profile company but a major new media conglomerate, called Bol, which Axact’s owners had been preparing to launch after using its cheque book to poach many of Pakistan’s best-known journalists.
Axact denied the allegations in a statement describing the New York Times story as “baseless, substandard, maligning, defamatory, and based on false accusations and merely a figment of imagination published without taking the company’s point of view”.
Without directly disproving the allegations, the company claimed it was the victim of a plot by its media rivals, including the Express group which is a distribution partner of the New York Times in Pakistan.
The company has also threatened a Pakistani blog that curated some online mockery of Axact following the publication of the story.
Axact founder Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh has a history of making flamboyant claims about the company, as well as his ambitions to become richer than Bill Gates and his efforts to help develop Pakistan.
In a country with dire social and economic indicators, Axact has claimed it will make education and healthcare “accessible to all by the year 2019”.
Shaikh rallied cheering staff on Tuesday, telling a gathering of employees that the company was the victim of both media rivals and unnamed individuals within the Pakistani state. Also on Tuesday, the Pakistani senate ordered a committee to be formed to investigate the scandal and submit a report in a month’s time.
