UK revelations revive stalled massive fake degree case

An all but stalled investigation in Pakistan into a massive fake degree scandal involving the Karachi-based IT firm Axact is expected to pick up again after thousands of United Kingdom citizens were found to have bought fake degrees from Axact and after the promise of a new investigation by UK authorities into the scam.

An investigation, ‘Degrees of Deception’, by the BBC Radio programme 'File on Four’ broadcast on 16 January alleged that Axact sold as many as 3,000 degrees to British nationals in 2013 and 2014, including to health officials and a large defence contractor. They included masters degrees and PhDs.

Pakistan’s Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar on Friday took the unusual step of directly summoning a report from Bashir Ahmed Memon, the director general of the country’s Federal Investigation Agency, or FIA, “within 10 days”, and ordered a date to be set for hearing the case relating to the fake degrees scam, first unearthed in 2015.

If news reports regarding the scandal are correct, the activity should be curbed, and if otherwise, Pakistan should defend its image, the Supreme Court judge said.

In the wake of the BBC investigation, the UK's Department for Education has said it would take "decisive action to crack down on degree fraud" that "cheats genuine learners". But in an official response issued on 16 January Axact condemned the BBC report’s “baseless accusations” and “substandard, non-factual and fallacious reporting", which, it said, contained "defamatory false accusations".

It said it would take legal action against the BBC, issuing a letter through its lawyers to that effect.

Axact previously said it would sue the New York Times after that paper’s original investigative report in 2015 revealed the company’s involvement in what was then described as the world’s biggest bogus degree scam, but no action was taken.

The New York Times published a response to its report from Axact that had been posted on Axact’s website. The statement said: “Axact condemns this 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.”

The full Axact statement can be read here.

In the wake of the 2015 New York Times report, police raids were conducted in Pakistan and dozens of Axact employees, including its CEO, Shoaib Shaikh, were arrested and then freed on bail.

In December 2016 a United States court charged Umair Hamid, assistant vice-president of Axact, with wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft “in connection with a worldwide ‘diploma mill’”, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said in a statement released on 21 December 2016.

On 29 August 2017, Umair was sentenced to 21 months’ imprisonment and fined US$5.3 million.

Axact has described the Umair Hamid case as being “of a personal nature that was wrongfully misquoted with respect to Axact in an attempt to further malign the organisation”.

Little headway in Pakistan

In Pakistan itself, despite seizing equipment from Axact’s offices in 2015, which the Pakistan authorities said contained evidence, and despite unprecedented media reporting and calls for action in Pakistan's parliament, there has been little apparent headway in bringing the diploma mill operators to book.

The FIA had lodged the cases in courts of Karachi and Islamabad based on its First Investigation Report which stated that Axact's CEO and five other employees were found to have "indulged in preparing, offering, selling, issuing fake, forged, bogus degrees, diplomas, certificates, accreditations of hundreds of fictitious universities, schools, colleges, purportedly based at different countries, including the USA and Middle Eastern countries, through a fraudulent online education system to foreign students".

Despite all the claims of "incriminating evidence", Shaikh was acquitted by the court in October 2016 on the money laundering charges. After being in custody for 15 months, Shaikh and 13 other Axact officials were released by the court on bail in other cases of forgery and fraud.

The slowdown of the trial, which was very speedy in the initial phases, aroused many concerns. Pakistan's GEO News TV reported that four prosecutors on the case had resigned.

In a televised talk show on Pakistan’s GEO TV aired in August 2017, former FIA special public prosecutor Zahid Jamil said: "The case against Axact was very strong due to massive proofs against it, but interestingly, the pieces of evidence were not included in the challan [court order] presented before [the] courts."

Jamil said he had to disassociate himself from the case for various reasons, which he did not specify. “Later other prosecutors also left and then you can see the fate of all the Axact cases ... As many as 61 witnesses were dropped from the case.”

It was also alleged, as reported by Pakistan’s Express Tribune newspaper, that a Session Court judge, Pervaiz-ul-Qadir Memon, had received a Rs5 million (US$78,000) bribe to acquit Shoaib Shaikh of the money laundering charges.

The judge first admitted and later retracted his confession of having received the bribe during a departmental investigation on which the Islamabad High Court served a show-cause notice to Memon that reads: “You have committed an act of corruption by receiving illegal gratification to the tune of Rs5 million for acquittal of accused [Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh] through judgment dated 31.10.2016."

Serving government officials have been reluctant to comment, simply saying the case is being pursued in the courts.

A hearing set for 6 December 2017 was adjourned by the court as Pakistan’s deputy attorney general failed to appear before the court.

Federal Secretary for the Ministry of Interior, Arshad Mirza, told University World News: "The FIA has done a remarkable job from investigation to prosecution and has left no stone unturned, from evidence gathering to its presentation in the courts."

On the court delays Mirza said: "We do not have any jurisdiction over the courts as the judicial process takes its own course."

Canadian investigative report

The BBC report follows a similar investigation by Canada’s CBC ‘Marketplace’ programme in September 2017, which found that more than 800 Canadians may have purchased fake degrees. CBC’s reporters said they obtained the business records of Axact and spent “months combing through” thousands of recorded degree transactions.

At the time of the CBC investigation Axact's US lawyer, Todd Holleman, said the company "does not own or operate any online education web sites [sic] or schools, and there has never been any evidence produced to show that Axact owns or operates any such web sites [sic] or schools".

Holleman indicated that the diploma mills were created by clients of Axact and that it "does not condone or support any alleged wrongful or fraudulent conduct by its clients, who are independent businesses".

Although the Axact-linked fake degrees business was said to have been shut down after the 2015 raids, a BBC journalist from ‘File on Four’, said he was offered a fake degree in business administration within minutes of calling the Axact office in Karachi last year. During a later phone call, the Axact representative claimed they had branches all over America.

BBC Journalist Simon Cox told Pakistan’s The News: “When we told UK’s educational bodies about Axact’s activities in the UK, they were simply not aware Axact was operating again. They are using these loopholes where the UK can’t do anything. Because they will say it’s up to Pakistani authorities or American authorities because they are pretending to be an American university.”

Cox said the BBC found that Axact continued to run allegedly fake university sites such as Brooklyn Park University, Neil Wilson University and Nixon University which exist only “online and don’t exist on the ground”.

The BBC did a thorough investigation to establish the involvement of Axact in the fraud business, Cox said.

Yojana Sharma contributed to this article from London.