Islamabad: The government launched an investigation on Tuesday into the affairs of Pakistani IT company Axact after the New York Times claimed it reaped millions of dollars annually by selling fake academic degrees online.
Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan tasked the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to probe the scandal after the US newspaper published a lengthy report about it, officials said.
Nisar directed the FIA to probe “if the said company is involved in any such illegal work which can tarnish the good image of the country in the world”, said an interior ministry statement.
Following the order, FIA teams raided the premises of Axact in Islamabad and Karachi and collected manuals, records and computers, local media reports said.
According to television channels a number of employees of the company were questioned by FIA investigators.
Private Geo News channel quoted FIA’s Cyber Crime wing Deputy Director Tahir Tanveer as saying more than 20 employees were taken into custody from the company’s Rawalpindi office which was sealed.
The interior minister was personally overseeing the investigation, the channel said, quoting official sources.
The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan has also reportedly started looking into the company’s records to ascertain if it had committed any financial wrongdoing or fraud.
According to published details, the company was registered in 2006. Axact has 0.6 million registered shares and a basic revenue of Rs7 million (Dh250,935).
At the time of registration, the company had disclosed three business activities — IT development, call centre operations and IT-related import and export.
The New York Times report claims Axact ran a fake education empire that involved paid actors promoting fictitious universities and even fake State Department authentication certifications.
Axact declared the report “baseless, substandard, maligning, defamatory, and based on false accusations” and said it would sue the NYT.
In a statement on its website, Axact accused domestic media rivals of colluding with the NYT to plant a slanderous story in order to harm its business interests.
