Qatar bans contractors leaving country in rain-damage probe: Parsons should be banned in Qatar

A motorist drives a car in a flooded street in the Qatari capital Doha following heavy rainfall on November 25, 2015. Qatar was hit by heavy flooding causing gridlock on the desert country's roads as well as closures of schools. (AFP PHOTO / AL-WATAN DOHA / KARIM JAAFAR) Associated Press Published — Saturday 28 November 2015 Last update 28 November 2015 4:53 pm Turkey warns against Russia travel in tit-for-tat move Turkey warns against Russia travel in tit-for-tat move Kenya police arrest two over terror plot linked to Iran KSA, Russia join forces to expand trade, crush terror Be ready for new wet, cold spell Editorial: Saudis stand united against terror outfits Reform call: Kuwait income drops 60% Yemen's president returns to Aden after 6-month exile VW admits 11 mn cars have pollution cheating device KSA blames world silence for Assad’s killing spree Journey of faith: Pilgrims begin moving into Mina DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: Qatar has banned contractors from leaving the small, oil-rich country as it carries out a probe into how heavy rains damaged buildings and roadways. An article late Friday on the state-run Qatar News Agency announced the travel ban. It said “owners of companies, contractors and consulting engineers” would be banned from traveling abroad until the end of the probe. A year’s worth of rain on Wednesday deluged Doha’s Hamad International Airport, the home of Qatar Airways, pouring through at least one part of the roof. The airport cost at least $15 billion to build. Rainwater also flooded streets and shut down some stores in Doha. Qatar has seen a boom in construction, some derided as shoddy, ahead of hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup. ======================================= Qatar launches probe after rains exposed poor construction At least 79.5 of rain fell at the airport, causing water to pour out of the ceiling Published: 15:43 November 27, 2015 Gulf NewsAP shareRssShare on facebookShare on facebookShare on twitterShare on twitterShare on google_plusone_shareAdd on google plusShare on emailSend Email to FriendMore Sharing ServicesAddthis3 Dubai: Qatar has launched an investigation after heavy rains exposed poor construction in a country set to host the 2022 Fifa World Cup, a deluge that saw water cascade through the roof of its $15 billion main airport. The investigation already is examining the work of five unnamed companies and others could be targeted as well in the probe launched by Prime Minister Shaikh Abdullah Bin Nasser Bin Khalifa Al Thani, who also serves as interior minister, the country’s state-run Qatar News Agency said. “Parties responsible for dereliction or negligence, whether governmental or private, will be held accountable,” the agency said, citing a statement late Wednesday from Qatar’s Government Communication Office. Reached for comment, officials at Doha’s Hamad International Airport issued a statement simply saying: “There was no impact to operations yesterday.” It referred other questions to the government. The day before, at least 79.5 millimetres of rain fell at the airport, according to the Qatar Meteorology Department. Typically, the hot, desert country sees around 50 millimetres of rain in a year. The sudden rainfall saw water pour out of the airport’s ceiling in several places, captured in online videos. Qatar opened Hamad International Airport in April 2014, part of its effort to enter the competitive Gulf airline market. The 600,000 square meter passenger terminal complex was scheduled to be completed in 2009. The airport is part of a multibillion-dollar building boom in Doha ahead of the 2022 World Cup. However, the push has seen Qatar criticised for the way it treats its large migrant worker population. There also have been accusations of shoddy construction. ================================================= Qatar’s flawed buildings to be probed Some schools had to cut the power off to make sure that students are not electrocuted Published: 19:17 November 26, 2015 Gulf NewsBy Habib ToumiBureau Chief shareRssShare on facebookShare on facebookShare on twitterShare on twitterShare on google_plusone_shareAdd on google plusShare on emailSend Email to FriendMore Sharing ServicesAddthis2 Manama: Qatar’s Prime Minister Shaikh Abdullah Bin Nasser Al Thani has ordered that all people and companies involved in the projects that have failed the test of rains this week be referred to investigators and subsequently to the public prosecution. On Wednesday, the Government Communication Office said that five companies so far would be investigated and that all parties proven guilty of negligence or failure, be they private or public, would face justice. The storm rains that lashed Qatar on Wednesday revealed the precarious state of several infrastructure projects, including roads, flyovers, and government, commercial and private buildings. As water submerged many roads, people were shocked to see that the newly-opened state of the art airport building was flawed and that rain seeped through the roof. The Sheraton and Hilton hotels, the new traffic directorate building, some malls and schools were also affected by the rain, prompting angry reactions from social media users who took pictures, videos and snapshots and shared them online. Some schools had to cut the power off to make sure that students are not electrocuted, a report in Qatari daily Al Raya said. A clip that went viral on the internet showed how part of a ceiling collapsed on employees’ tables in a government building while in another video, the submerged roads triggered a wave of scornful and angry comments. Reports in the capital Doha said the heavy downpour started at 6am and continued throughout the day. As the water on the roads rose and formed pools, traffic came to a standstill in some areas. Workers had to exert special efforts to ensure that the major arteries of the capital were not blocked, witnesses said. However, families complained about how difficult it was to move or to reach facilities where ponds of water had formed. The daily weather bulletins have for one week forecast heavy rains, but the chaos that hit the capital showed that people did not expect the rains to be this severe and that they were not prepared. Paramedics responded to 250 emergency calls and road traffic collisions between 6am and 3pm, Hamad Medical Corporation said in a statement. The figure marks an increase of 50 cases over the day before. Last year, an investigation was launched when the Salwa Road underpass was flooded in the wake of exceptionally heavy rainfall. The probe concluded that the flooding was caused by the lack of an outlet for the road’s drains. ============================================================== Floating cars, people in boats: Havoc as Qatar, Saudi Arabia ravaged by heavy rains (PHOTOS, VIDEOS) Published time: 26 Nov, 2015 08:45 Get short URL © carolyn_redaelli © carolyn_redaelli / Instagram Cars floating in rivers that were once streets, water gushing through ceilings and people sailing to work on boats – that’s the current picture in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, both desert countries, which should be dry and sunny for the whole year. Qatar’s capital Doha was apparently unprepared for the deluge and flooding that damaged many buildings in the city. The area near the capital’s Hamad International Airport was hammered with around 66mm of rain in just a few days, according to the Qatar Meteorology Department. For the record, Doha has 75mm of rain on average a year. Many buildings at the multibillion-dollar airport failed to hold up to the torrent: pictures and videos on social media show water flooding into the passenger terminal. Cascades of water fell from a ceiling inside Ezdan Mall in Doha, Doha News reported. “Inclement weather” prompted the closure of schools across the country as well as the US Embassy in Qatar on Wednesday. The Qatar Interior Ministry advised citizens to be “cautious”. READ MORE: Monster cyclone threatens Yemen & Oman with floods, landslides “Flawed [building] projects” that didn’t withstand the rains have angered Qatari authorities. Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al-Thani ordered all companies guilty of shoddy building practices to face the public prosecutor. “Parties responsible for dereliction or negligence, whether governmental or private, will be held accountable. All bodies and companies that implemented flawed projects must be investigated and then face public prosecution,” a spokesperson for Qatar’s Government Communication Office told Doha News. READ MORE: Huge ice flash flood sweeps across Saudi Arabia (VIDEO) Neighboring Saudi Arabia was also hit by heavy rains. Drivers were forced to abandon their vehicles in some streets. Schools have also been closed in the worst affected areas for a minimum of two days. q Feel the sound and fury of the significant #DohaRain which flooded streets #امطار_قطر #قطر_تغرق pic.twitter.com/EnYYXEcHhc — شبكة زاجل الإخبارية (@alzajilNews) November 25, 2015Q At least one person was killed in the floods in Rimah Province, Saudi media reported, citing local authorities. Heavy rain now on Alkhor Rd to RasLaffan with loud thundering.(Video by Passenger) #QatarRain @dohanews @qatarliving https://twitter.com/Javaid_Abid/status/669761829539848193 ====================================================== -------------- Ahmad Alld • 11 hours ago This happen when you have duplicate Mohandis and Technicians....And other those so called SCE's approved Engineers are actually flop in their home countries. How many IIT/IIIT/IIM/NIT graduates are working in KSA/GCC? Morpheus • 13 hours ago let me guess, all contractors and consultants were headed to Cairo?

Axact and diploma mills: The Article Nobody Will Publish

Nobody Will Publish – by Wajahat S Khan The Article Nobody Will Publish – by Wajahat S Khan May 26th, 2015 | 69 Comments Editors Note: Wajahat S. Khan sent me an email with this heartfelt piece on his recent experience with the ” the all-consuming, thankless revolving door that is Pakistani broadcast media”. He rightly complains about his seniors and colleagues in the industry. I am reproducing his email that was sent with the article: “Hey, Champ: Wrote this three days ago. Soon after my resignation. “They” won’t publish it. They don’t want to. They say it’s good, but now won’t return my calls now. Can you read it? And run it on Pak Tea House? And help me get the word out?” Many other media workers have been let down by the leading lights in the recent saga of BOL TV’s meltdown after the expose in New York Times. I support my friend Wajahat – at least he has the courage to admit his oversight, the candour to say it all. This too shall pass Waj. Raza Rumi The Article Nobody Will Publish: “We should have known, but we didn’t want to” By Wajahat S Khan wajahat3 I should have known. When Declan Walsh called me the Wednesday before the story broke, I should have known. When he questioned me and had the distinct privilege of making me feel awkward about my own institution, I should have known. When I called up one of my bosses and told him what the New York Times was working on, and heard a pause, and then a diffident “who cares, we will sue them”, I should’ve known. I should have known when I saw the flash, the cars, the protocol officers, the waiters and the chauffers. I should’ve known when I heard the carefully crafted, contrived American accents and emphasis everywhere: in the recording in the elevator that told me I was joining a global elite, in the human resource officers who were designated to provide me with a restaurant-level chef, in the photographer who would conduct my “branding photo shoot”, in the gym-instructor who would chisel me into shape for the big screen. Obviously, I misread the vulgar as the virtuous. I should have known better. When the hype of organizational self-belief became religious, then invective (Denunciatory or abusive language; vituperation: an orator known for his abundant use of invective.), then zealous, I should have known. But the confidence, pouring from the Axact gurus to the Bol executives to me to a thousand other colleagues, was contagious. This was an organization that had grown out of a back office in northern Karachi to cover a few blocks of DHA, I was told. This was an organization that represented the true potential of a modern, connected, online and tech-savvy Pakistan, I was told. This was an organization that I – a nobody kid from a middle-income broken home who was lucky and loud enough to attend a couple of good schools and persistent enough to ride the wave of broadcast journalism in Pakistan as it unleashed upon the national polity – would actually own, not just work for. I was stunned by the possibilities. But arrogance has a tone. Denial has a deafening silence. And mirages ( 1. An optical phenomenon that creates the illusion of water, often with inverted reflections of distant objects, and results from distortion of light by alternate layers of hot and cool air. Also called fata morgana. 2. Something illusory or insubstantial.) are self-constructed. I contributed to all three, in my three months at Bol. And played along with the best of them, because of where they came from, who they are, and what it all meant. First, denial: In an industry, which is in the business of compounding transparency, I am not the only one who has put on blinders while running the course over the years. Simply, denial is the price of survival in Pakistani media, nothing else. It’s not an excuse when I admit that like many other colleagues of my broadcast generation, I’ve had it pretty rough. Bol was my seventh channel in 12 years of broadcasting in Pakistan: Indus, Geo, Dawn (the last two I helped launch), Samaa, PTV Sports, Aaj and then Geo again (where I saw the post-Hamid Mir ‘ban’ take effect) had taken me, consumed me, and let me out on the streets like an angry, orphaned, urchin, toughening me up every time with a deep, hateful skepticism of the “private/electronic media” regime. Sometimes, I got fired. Other times, I left on principle or got recruited by a bigger gun. But every time, there was a toxic cocktail of the same-old-same-old – office politics, curbed editorial freedom, delayed pay-cheques, pandering to sponsors, corporate, political and security bosses who made their presence felt but weren’t technically in control, not enough re-investment in our internal systems and structures to sustain the counter-culture and public service ethos of what journalism must strive to become instead of the ratings-driven, family-owned, suits-and-boots dominated chop shop, a mogul-military mouthpiece, that it is in most newsrooms today around the country. But like an abused, dependent spouse, I kept coming back to my tormentor. I was in denial. Sometimes, I led myself into believing I didn’t have a choice, and carried on. Other times, I tried to break loose with a fellowship, or a foreign gig, or print work, but those got old, fast. With all due self-respect, as the “revolving door” of the media industry is a scary machine, you learnt to take on the world, except your own, because of that dependency. It was like a good, consistent drug deal: There was nowhere else to go, and I was hooked on the product. We all work like that. We all do. Personally, where else would I go? Print? Been there, done that, and still do. It’s static, if not deteriorating. Regional? International? Done those, too. They are limiting: CNN and NBC are relevant, but not locally inspiring. Twitter? A blog. No way. This is Pakistan, said the ego to the id. This is TV Land. And in TV Land we live, but by a simple rule: The story – except your own – must get out, at whatever cost. That was the oath impinged on our psyches. It was the modern Pakistani broadcaster’s dilemma: Do Tell Upon Others, Do Not Tell Upon Yourself. Thus, the “this is my job, this is my industry, this is what we do” instinct ruled, though only on the surface. So I learnt the hard way – and never shared openly, till today, though it’s no secret – that in Pakistan, you take the media’s fallibilities like a family disease: as a given, with resignation, never personally, rather only as destiny, but also never to be shared with outsiders. After all, we’re a family: a spiteful one with a fondness for fratricide, but we are one. Tell On Us And Be Banished, said the other rule. And so the backroom chatter remained in the backroom, even as we changed bosses and companies and editors round about the ever revolving door. From a boss who makes toothpastes and records sex-tapes on yachts, to a boss too closely tied to the judiciary, to a boss who cleaned the books for Arab sheikhs, to a boss who let editorial be underwritten by USAID and DFID programming, we tolerated – no embraced – that crucial, critical breach: the death of the Church Versus State / Management Versus Editorial divide. And then came Bol, red and white and glossy and gold. Even in its virtual reality, which we purchased almost like a fake degree because we were – are – so desperate, we saw a chance. Here was an opportunity that was presented by the best and brightest in the industry: Men I’ve known for over a decade, men I’ve wanted to emulate, mimic, sound like; my self-inflicted role models, gods of the newsroom, leaders of the field my generation has followed blindly into emergencies and clampdowns and gag orders and tear gassing and PEMRA wars and taken late night calls from GHQ and the PM Secretariat for. Men who inspire such confidence that when you’re “called” into Aabpara, you arrive, and not just show up, because you believe. Men who teach you, and remind the country through you, that truth prevails, and that it’s still worth something in Pakistan. Yet, these men let themselves down. They let me down. They let 2000 of my colleagues down. And they let down the country, too. Very honestly, I may have possibly helped them, and not only because I had my blinders on. There was ambition, too. The case being presented was as powerful as its famous presenters, the pioneers of Pakistani broadcast: That we will break the machine. That we will never take directives or late night calls from the overbearing father-and-son combines, from the vested patrons and the imperious security regime, but from our own kind: editors and reporters, producers and camera persons, leaders and best. There was promise, of course. That we will be paid on time, for a change. That we will go public, and have joint-ownership, and life insurance, and medical coverage, and a rainy-day fund, and a coffee machine that worked. That we won’t have to beg our flagrant and private jetting seths for a cheque that was due three months ago, because we are the bosses, now. We are the possessors, the creators, the true masters of an industry that runs on our risk, yet never rewards us. It was a big idea. Of course it was good to believe that Bol’s would be the generation that was going to conduct that modern, necessary triage upon that hemorrhaging, convulsing, cannibalistic Pakistani media. But our self-righteous ambition, our greater goal, made us self-destructive. We tried to conduct surgery on our self to cut away the unwanted bit. But we were one. And we remain one, faults and all. Yet we thought we were different. We were told we are different, by snake-oil salesmen we desperately tried to ape in their quick success, because we were determined, and hungry, and yes, inspired by the most righteous of our very own kind. It was a compelling sell, made by the time-tested warriors of the spoken and written word that I, for one, had sworn to believe in (and no, I’m not implying the military here, though I was never overtly encouraged or discouraged, by any martial quarters, who I tend to report on, in this regard). I was sold the mission by men who the industry, nay, the country was sold on for decades. And yes, the money wasn’t bad, either, though for the record, Bol was/is deeply, maybe even ineptly, top heavy. My books speaks for themselves. Thus, my follies: My due diligence was overshadowed by the bright promises made by my leaders, the best in the business, who were, perhaps, blinded by their own ambition as well as their well-intentioned drive to change the great game. And although my loyalty wasn’t worth my network’s master’s retirement plans or their armoured vehicles, my fellow Bol colleagues and I willfully carried on, through the taunts of even family and friends – that we were alleged “fronts”, or “projects”, or a “scheme” of underworld bosses, of military spooks, of property tycoons – because we wanted to believe that success, slick and polished and well heeled and hip, is possible, even for journalists. Soldiers tell me that being shot is a strange feeling. Even in a firefight, when you’re expecting it, there is a sting, then a burn, then a weakness, then a slowing down of speech and senses, then a general disillusionment, and then darkness. That’s about what’s happened since I read Walsh’s piece one week ago. As I read it again and again over the week, for its solid craft and its savage logic, along with the bevy of filth cum lucidity that it birthed on social and national media, I found the hyper-organized Axact and then the Bol configurations disintegrate. I sensed hesitation in the tones of my gods; I sensed their self-assuredness wilt away as their stubbles grew, heard their perfect oratory devolve into delusional harangues (1. A long pompous speech, especially one delivered before a gathering. 2. A speech or piece of writing characterized by strong feeling or expression; a tirade.). I sensed my once-aggressive reporters break eye contact, their backs hunched. I felt the five-star cafeteria food taste bland, and saw my fuel card stop working. Even the janitors seemed to go missing. As the structure crumbled and the conversations got more cynical, I sensed the machine – which was going to break all machines – breakdown itself. Communication, consolidation, camaraderie – buzzwords that were our core considerations– morphed into an each-man-for-himself scrimmage. I honestly can’t believe it, but resigning on Twitter, probably not technically legal, became a necessity, as our basic function – being public servants – was suspended by our disbelief in ourselves, even each other. In the end, our detractors were not our real or imagined partners or benefactors, nor frivolous colleagues or jealous critics, but our own bosses and creators and, yes, undoubtedly, even ourselves. We were naive, of course, but also motivated and thick-skinned, engaged in a tight, eyeless defensive crouch in fear of the all-consuming, thankless revolving door that is Pakistani broadcast media. And so, battle-hardened hacks but still pawns, self-declared false prophets of all that is wrong and unjust in this wasted land, we are on the street again. Yet, we will walk back through that door, as we still believe. But this time, it’s not our silence, but our embarrassment, that will lead us back in. Wajahat S. Khan is a former Executive Vice President for Bol TV who resigned his position on principle last weekend. He continues as the Pakistan Correspondent for NBC News. -------------------------------------- UAE residents caught in Axact fake degree scam Pakistani media company says claims are baseless, substandard, maligning, defamatory, and based on false accusations. Construction News . UAE residents caught in Axact fake degree scam University degree scam has netted company millions globally, says the New York Times. . Published: 20 May 2015 - 6 a.m. . By: Courtney Trenwith UAE residents have allegedly bought fake university certificates from a Pakistani media company accused of a global fake degrees scam that has netted it tens of millions of dollars. The New York Times has claimed in an expose this week that the company Axact, based in Karachi with 2,000 employees, has run a fake education empire that involved paid actors promoting fictitious universities and fake US State Department authentication certifications with the signature of US Secretary of State John Kerry. The company created a series of websites involving “professors” and students who were in fact paid actors and employees who would plant fictitious reports about Axact “universities” on CNN iReport, a website for citizen journalism, the New York Times said. Clients from the US, UK and the UAE were cited as having had paid sums ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars for their degrees, believing the universities were real and they would soon receive coursework. The NYT quoted former Axact employees and more than 370 websites of fake universities, accreditation bodies and other purported institutions. . Axact which is planning this year to launch a news channel named Bol and has already hired many of Pakistan’s top TV anchors and journalists, with reportedly the highest salaries in the market, used social media and its own website to deny any wrongdoing. A message on its website declared the story “baseless, substandard, maligning, defamatory, and based on false accusations” and added it would sue the New York Times. It accused domestic media rivals of colluding with the New York Times to plant a slanderous story in order to harm its business interests. =========================== KARACHI: A senior level former employee of Axact revealed on Monday that he worked from Axact’s Karachi office and was involved in luring in customers into buying degrees. Speaking exclusively during an interview in "Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada Kay Saath", former Axact employee Taha Jatoi went on to say that the biggest priority on Axact’s agenda was to rake in as many students as possible to sell online degrees to. He further revealed that all universities including Belford University existed only online and were operated from Axact’s Karachi office. Taha said that candidates had to give an exam before applying but this was only a formality. He went on to say that fake degrees were issued, stamped and attested by Axact Karachi office, and fake names were used. He said each agent had a university assigned to him or her, while he was responsible for the portfolio of Must University. Online education, online research and online design are three major departments of Axact, claimed Taha. He added that Axact provided thesis and essay papers to students abroad through the 'online research' section and this department mostly had young girls as employees. I Hussain Tuesday, May 26, 2015 The New York Times expose earlier in the week showing that Axact Technologies’ is not the ‘World’s Leading IT Company’ but allegedly a front for a massive fake degree scam was nothing short of sensational. If the NYT’s allegations are proven, then how Axact was able to operate its ‘business model’ in the fashion it did for more than a decade below the radar of Pakistani officialdom beggars belief. The company’s ascent seemed plausible enough as computer software and the business possibilities of the online world have created billionaires not only in Silicon Valley but also in India and China; Axact tapped into this meme by projecting itself not only as riding the new wave of technology but being at the very forefront of innovation. In other words, a Pakistani success story at the global level. The presence of an ambitious CEO only added to the halo around Axact since no one gets to be richer than Bill Gates (the Axact CEO’s professed aim) by being shy and humble. The naysayers who murmured their misgivings about all not being quite right with Axact were dismissed as conspiracy theorists driven by envy, who didn’t get how the world had changed for ambitious entrepreneurs willing to harness technology to achieve their globe spanning aims. In their follow-up editorial, ‘A rising tide of bogus degrees’, the NYT cites a source indicating that there are 3300 “unrecognized” universities worldwide. They also say that Axact is connected to about 370 education websites of which around 100 have been identified by the NYT as providing post-secondary school educational “certificates”. It would appear that Axact accounts for around three percent of the worldwide population of universities existing in name only – a significant if not overwhelming percentage. In revenue terms if we use the figure given by the NYT of over 50,000 PhDs being ‘awarded’ each year by these online ‘universities’ and if each PhD given costs on average $4,000 to the recipient then total revenues generated annually in this ‘segment’ are around $200 million of which Axact’s share could be around $6-$10 million if we assume it has a 3-5 percent market share based on the NYT numbers. How much revenue Axact generated from its online diploma platforms is of course moot but the NYT article cites a former employee claiming that Axact was generating at least $120,000 a day – or over $35 million annually (assuming weekends off for employees). If true, this is greater than the combined current annual revenues of two leading Pakistan based IT companies, Systems Ltd and Netsol Technologies as indicated by their financial statements. The profit margins must be staggeringly high since there are no expensive faculty on the payroll, no buildings and stadia to maintain and no direct or indirect taxes to pay since revenues are booked in tax-free locations such as the British Virgin Islands, Belize and Dubai where the majority shareholder (s) is based. Given that revenues are earned in dollars while expenses are incurred for the most part in rupees there is the strong likelihood that profit margins and overall profits have been swelling by substantial amounts since the rupee has been depreciating consistently against the dollar over the past several years. Aside from reports of boiler-room sales tactics, the issue now is whether what Axact is alleged to have done breached any criminal laws in Pakistan or in the jurisdictions where its servers are being hosted (if proved, the forgery of John Kerry’s signature and the US State Department seal constitutes a serious criminal offence anywhere). The matter, however, is not as clear cut as many may believe since what is unethical is not necessarily illegal. Thus if there were no boundaries between ethics and legality then we would undoubtedly find a large number of, say, used car dealers in jail. As far as university education is concerned some countries have strict guidelines. For instance in Australia it is a criminal offence to use the word university and claim to offer degree and diploma courses without governmental authorisation. Similar prohibitions apply in countries as diverse as India, South Korea, Malaysia, Germany, Switzerland and the UK. Pakistan, however, does not categorically make the use of the word ‘university’ by an online provider a criminal offence. What the HEC does do is publish a list of accredited universities and degree awarding institutions on its website. It is for employers whether in the public or private sectors to determine whether the degree-holder has a genuine diploma from a recognised institution of higher learning. The US position is somewhat ambivalent and is more or less a ‘caveat emptor’ attitude. Given that the provision of education there falls within the purview of state governments it is not surprising that there is no uniformity of approach as far as the requirements for accreditation are concerned. Some states such as New York clamp down hard on unaccredited universities whereas others such as California are fairly lenient letting the market decide the fate of myriad educational institutions. One can infer that the clients and patrons of shell universities are to a large extent willing to go along with the purveyors of fraudulent degrees and therefore cannot be entirely absolved of blame. Surely if there is no coursework, no home assignments, and no tests or exams to take then the person is only deluding himself or herself if they believe that they have achieved an educational milestone by purchasing a certificate. Most likely, the buyers in turn are motivated by rational considerations such as getting a better job or meeting some residency or citizenship requirement and try and achieve their goals by taking the quickest and, to their minds, cheapest route possible. The intriguing case in the NYT story is that of the Saudi man who reportedly spent over $400,000 (about Rs41 million) to get fake degrees. What did he aim to achieve in exchange for the substantial amount of money spent on worthless pieces of paper? A cabinet position? One doubts that it was on account of a sense of personal fulfilment since he could have gone to the Coursera or EdX websites to achieve his moment of bliss and that too at no financial cost since most of the large number of excellent courses offered by these two Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) providers involving the world’s leading universities are offered for free. Notwithstanding the question marks over Axact’s future prospects, the issue is whether we as a nation are going to do something about the rash of fake degrees in our midst – whether in politics, academia or the professions. This is where the government has to take the lead in legislation. However, given the number of parliamentarians who have dubious educational credentials this is about as likely as turkeys voting for Christmas. The writer is Group Director for Business Development at the Jang Group. Email: iqbal.hussain@janggroup.com.pk

SHC rejects Axact CEO’s protective bail plea

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Fake diplomas, real cash: Pakistani company Axact reaps millions

Moeed Pirzada 11 hrs · . Of BOL, Axact, Media Tycoons, New York Times & Govt Interests: - Ch. Nisar spoke well, and carefully articulated his govt's position. Though he requested media not to speculate but his statements gave enough to spill the beans of what is coming, especially with respect to FBI and 'seriously significant evidences'. It appears fate of BOL as a large TV platform and of Axact as an IT Company or whatever it did is more or less sealed. Earlier the tweets of Kamran Khan and Azhar Abbas hint that they, along with many others, were thinking of leaving; this may materialize within the next few hours and it will lead to a panic stampede of all those who will rush to leave looking for jobs. Resultant chaos will lead to major reshuffle within the media platforms consolidating the "media financial interests/owners" and seriously weakening the independent voices within the journalist community and will strengthen the govt that allies with key media interests. There used to be a webportal, "Power & Interest News Report (PINR) in Chicago which I used to subscribe. It was a brilliant online portal with American, Russian and Indian analysts analyzing the clash between different financial and political interests without offering any moral judgments, of good and bad, leaving this to the readers. I think we need PINR Analytical tool to make sense of what happened between different players that defined the dynamics of "Bol/Axact Battle" First the most important players of the battle; Pakistani Media Owners who clubbed together, in an unprecedented fashion, as allies against the BOL/Axact duo. Why? because they realized that BOL's financial model (with large salaries, insurance, shares and perks etc) is a threat to their businesses, will raise their expense beyond their ability to manage and if it continued even for a year it will knock them out. They suspected and alleged that this is not just a commercial business venture; though since 2002 many media entities have financed themselves from outside their balance sheets, investing funds through other businesses or unknown sources (even from outside the country) but in case of BOL some key media platforms felt strongly and even alleged that this represents a plan or "intervention in the market" to weaken them by Pakistani establishment. Some suspected international interests and names of a real estate tycoon were also mentioned. This picture remained confusing but all sides remained convinced of their own versions. During the recent crisis several important media persons before emptying their magazines, loaded with bullets of hate and jealousy, into the chest of BOL wanted to verify if some powerful interests are behind, but drew blank responses from all corners. Pakistani Media interests tried persuading govt into action, against BOL, but govt, though sympathetic for its own reasons and media alliances, was not sure how to act on its own. New York Times was thus drawn into it by certain Pakistani media interests; it appears that initial facts and research into their business rivals "potential wrongdoings" and "suspicious business model/revenue streams" were all shared by the media interests from Karachi. New York Times has written almost 6 times so far on this issue and it appears will continue to follow as it develops providing pretext for action in Pakistan and in all probability in the US. What is interesting is that NYT lacks any track record of substantive interest in "Diploma Mills" or "Fake Degrees" within the US. It has never taken much interest in all scandals that broke like the "Saint Regis University" and has ignored international reports that appeared from time to time that pointed that both US and UK have become the biggest centers of suspicious online diploma/degrees. So why such a strong interest this time? Not only five news reports but also a position by the New York Times Editorial Board asking Congress to look into the whole issue. However NYT Editorial - with its appeals to Congress - also proved that no real legal framework with teeth exists within the US to deal with the kind of fraud Axact is alleged to have been involved with. This is because in the $16 trillion plus economy genuine education is well structured through an interlocking mechanism of standardized testing. US system does allow diplomas/certificates/degrees in lieu of life experiences and online study etc and apparently this loosely structured low end market is not very well regulated and many mavericks like Axact (as per allegation) are exploiting this, under the radar and so far the US lawmakers and enforcement agencies are not much bothered about this $1 Billion segment of a $16 trillion economy. This brings in Pakistani FIA. Some people familiar with what is happening thus think that FIA action was conceived before NYT story. Many people were aware that story was developing. However without FIA action in Karachi it was difficult or may be impossible for FBI to initiate an action on its own. This explains the importance of FIA action and the urgency in which it was apparently initiated and where it ultimately fits into. The real question for FIA/FBI to determine will be that 130 plus Diploma sites were all different standalone entities or were controlled by a single umbrella company like Axact. It is pretty obvious that whatever hanky panky or serious irregularities and abuse Axact may or may not have been doing was of little interest to FBI and regulators or even New York Times in the US or governments in Pakistan. So if Axact did not have he audacity of launching a large media platform it could have continued exploiting the legal loopholes that existed. This underscores that in the new global order media platforms with "significant capacity" the kind of which BOL hinted at are seen as tools of power and control and as threats to entrenched interests- and cannot be allowed to operate without the approval of right quarters. So BOL did not have any real consensus behind it. Its like Banking, BCCI example not exactly relevant but interesting here; it had to fold because it did not have the support of a large political power behind it, was doing audacious hanky panky that included defiance of international consensus on monetary issues; like extending credit to certain countries being disciplined by financial denials. But what is in it for New York Times? As I have noted it has little track record of interest in "diploma mills" in the US and given its global range of interests will be least bothered to enter into a highly personalized battle between Pakistani Seths. Many familiar with NYT argue that Pakistan state does not fit well in its world view, if its upto NYT then Pakistan would have ceased as a country long time ago or would have voluntarily merged into India; so its interests are in Pakistani state, nuclear issue, establishment wrong doings and so on. Could it be possible that its friends and allies in Pakistani media have convinced NYT that a deeper probe will lead to something bigger that can fit into its regional and international interests? So lets see if NYT finds what it is really looking for - that is certainly not the Diploma Mills. Avoiding tax, Axact moved Rs8 billion from UAE to Pakistan By Our Correspondent Published: May 23, 2015 91 SHARES Share Tweet Email Company failed to prove money was generated through software sales. PHOTO: AFP Company failed to prove money was generated through software sales. PHOTO: AFP KARACHI: Axact moved more than Rs8 billion in tax-free, foreign currency from Dubai to Pakistan over the last four years, a Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) probe has revealed, as the bureau prepares to register cases of money-laundering, tax evasion and illegal use of cyberspace against the IT company. Investigators scrutinising Axact’s financial records, including audit reports and balance sheets, said the company transferred foreign exchange worth Rs1 billion to Pakistan in 2011. This amount, they said, was presented as income from the sale of software and IT-related services. The company moved the funds without paying any tax by taking advantage of government concessions aimed at promoting software export. In 2012, Axact moved thrice the amount to Pakistan, investigators said, avoiding tax using the aforementioned concessions. The company continued this practice over subsequent years until, by 2014, it had moved as much as Rs8 billion to Pakistan without paying any tax on the income, they added. According to investigators, the money was transferred to Pakistan via Dubai through transactions involving a few hundred to thousands of dollars. Sources said Axact is adamant that this foreign exchange was generated by the sale of software and IT services. But investigators said the company has failed to provide documentary evidence to back up the claim. If the income was generated from any means other than the sale of software and IT services, then Axact has committed money-laundering, they added. FIA officials are preparing to lodge three to four cases against Axact on charges of money-laundering, tax evasion and illegal use of cyberspace based on irregularities found in the company’s financial records. The agency’s IT and forensic experts have also collected important evidence from emails and computers, sources said. The FIA director is set to present a comprehensive report on evidence against Axact collected so far to Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan today (Saturday), they said. A decision on whether cases will be registered immediately or if investigators will be given more time to collect additional proofs will be taken after the meeting, the sources added. Published in The Express Tribune, May 23rd, 2015. ========= Pakistan Widens Inquiry Into Fake Diplomas By DECLAN WALSHMAY 22, 2015 Photo People gather at the entrance of an Axact company building after a raid by the Federal Investigation Agency. Credit Farooq Naeem/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Continue reading the main story Share This Page Email Share Tweet Save more Continue reading the main story Advertisement Continue reading the main story LONDON — Heavy scrutiny by investigators, politicians and the fractious Pakistani media sector has mounted over the past week for Axact, a Karachi-based software company that has made millions selling fake degrees through a sprawling empire of school websites. The tax authorities, the Interior Ministry and the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, among others, have announced inquiries into the company’s operations. Its Karachi headquarters and a smaller office in Islamabad were sealed after a raid by the authorities earlier in the week. The company’s founder, Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh, has been summoned to an interview with federal investigators. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage Axact, which has its headquarters in Karachi, Pakistan, ostensibly operates as a software company. Fake Diplomas, Real Cash: Pakistani Company Axact Reaps MillionsMAY 17, 2015 Axact runs hundreds of websites, many of which purport to be online universities and high schools based in the United States. Pakistani Investigators Raid Offices of Axact, Fake Diploma CompanyMAY 19, 2015 Open Source: Axact, Fake Diploma Company, Threatens Pakistani Bloggers Who Laugh at Its ExpenseMAY 18, 2015 Tracking Axact’s WebsitesMAY 17, 2015 Axact has thrived for more than a decade on its ability to hide links between its operation in Karachi and hundreds of fictitious online schools, many of them claiming to be American. But more such links are coming to light in the days since The New York Times published a detailed account of the company’s operations, and Axact’s chief executive has begun shifting his tack in public statements. At first, Mr. Shaikh insisted that the only link between Axact and the hundreds of fake school sites was that his company sold software to what he called “associates and partners.” In a television interview on Wednesday, however, he conceded that Axact provided office-support and call-center services for those websites. Still, he continued to deny being a part of any scam. “Axact does not issue any degree or diploma, whether real or fake,” Mr. Shaikh said in the interview. In the past few days, the company’s array of fake online universities and high schools has gone silent. In calls and text messages to 111 websites identified as being operated by Axact, a New York Times reporter was unable establish contact with a single sales agent. The scandal has driven intense coverage by the Pakistani television news media, much of it on stations whose owners were already at odds with Mr. Shaikh, ostensibly over his plans to start his own television network, Bol, in the coming months. Television crews have been camped outside the company’s Karachi headquarters all week. Away from the media glare, people at differing ends of Axact’s elaborate degree scheme have continued to come forward with their accounts. Sikander Riaz, who said he worked as a sales agent under the pseudonym Hank Moody for six weeks last summer, was one of a dozen people who contacted The New York Times to identify themselves as former Axact employees, and were able to provide consistent and detailed descriptions of the organization. Mr. Riaz, a 22-year-old communications student, said he had been tasked to sell degrees for Harvey University and Nixon University out of an Islamabad-based call center for Axact. “Our punch line was that we could give customers a degree in 10 to 15 days,” he said. Another former employee, who asked to be identified only as Ahmad, part of his full name, expressed regret. “I feel bad about people I ripped off,” he said. “I could never tell my family that I sold degrees that destroyed people’s lives.” Continue reading the main story Ahmad said he averaged sales of $500,000 per quarter, on behalf of fake high schools with names like Belford, Lorenz and Adison, during a three-year stint at Axact. By the time he left in 2012, the company was taking in $80,000 to $100,000 a day, he said, providing copies of his pay stubs to prove he had been employed by Axact. He said that many of his early customers were young Americans seeking a high school diploma to fulfill a requirement for enlisting in the Army to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. “We would celebrate like crazy if we hit $125,000 a day,” he said. Unraveling Axact’s complex system of payments and revenues — much of which former employees have said is routed through offshore companies — is one potential challenge for the seven-member government investigation team announced by Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Wednesday. Former employees said that Axact uses at least 20 offshore companies to process customer revenues, pay suppliers and purposefully create a shield between Axact and the financial affairs of its websites. Many of those companies the employees identified, such as EduConnect and Education SP, have their own websites and say they sell educational software. One such firm, Connect Shift, which is registered in Cyprus, lists Mr. Shaikh as its chief executive, according to company registration records. Axact has left some traces of American connections as well. They include mailboxes in California, Colorado and Texas, and two Bank of America accounts at a branch in Florida that two former customers of Axact-run school sites said had been provided as a place to send payments. By several accounts, Axact’s main financial and logistical hub outside Pakistan is in Dubai, where its holding company, Axact FZ, is located. Reporters for The Khaleej Times newspaper who visited the registered office of Axact FZ this week described a deserted glass cubicle with a desk and two chairs. For years, former employees said, Axact’s diploma certificates were shipped to customers across the globe through a courier service in Dubai, to give the impression of being based in that city’s free trade zone. But that facade nearly collapsed in 2009, when a technology journalist from Saudi Arabia started looking more closely. The journalist, Molouk Ba-Isa, was following up on a report that Rochville University had awarded a masters in business administration to an American pug named Chester. Although Rochville’s physical location was a mystery, Ms. Ba-Isa learned from a courier company official in Dubai that the degree originated from Axact’s office in Karachi. But when The Arab News published her report, naming Axact, she said her editors received a strongly worded legal threat from company lawyers, and the article was removed from the Internet. This week, Ms. Ba-Isa said in an email that she felt vindicated. Former customers of the fake online schools spoke of frustration and anger in their dealings with universities they thought were based in the United States. Mary, a businesswoman in Dubai who wanted to be identified only by part of her name, said she spent $210,000 with Paramount California University in the hope of a genuine third-level business qualification. “I was paying for an education, not buying a degree,” she said. “I’ve only got a high school education, so I did it for my own self worth, and nothing else.” Mary said she and her husband enrolled for business degrees they hoped to study for at home over the winter. Instead she found herself being pursued and hectored by sales agents into making ever-greater payments for fees, registration and legalization. As she started to suspect a fraud, her confusion turned to denial and then anger. “I didn’t know where to turn,” said Mary, who has hired an American lawyer to help seek a refund. “People say, ‘How could you be so stupid?’ I was one of the stupid ones.” Griff Palmer contributed reporting from New York, and Saba Imtiaz from Karachi, Pakistan. A version of this article appears in print on May 23, 2015, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Pakistan Widens Inquiry Into Fake Diplomas . Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe =========== Why I Left Axact? The Inside Picture. May 19th, 2015 | 20 Comments Kasim Osmani Yeterday, social media lashed out at Axact after NYT report disclosed its million-dollars fake degrees scam. Axact appears to be ‘world’s leading IT company’ as its slogan reads; however, most of its office floors (at least at DHA) are occupied with agents who operate in Middle East region luring Arab/international people with certified US degrees solely on basis of their professional experience. These degrees range from Bachelors, Masters, and PhD (Axact takes pains to prepare thesis for you as well, if you don’t have enough time or skills!). Agents are advised to use Bayt.com or Linkdin as source and it is said to customer that either of these organizations have forwarded his/her profile for consultations. As a matter of fact, while I was working at Axact’s DHA office, the Bayt.com, largest job search engine in Middle East, warned Axact not to use their name as source, after which, we were advised to use Linkdin or else manipulate the script somehow. Axact agents tell customers the main reason why big corporations do not hire you is absence of bachelors, masters, or PhD degree that they can get sitting home. Our script read like: “you don’t have to take classes, or, listen to online lectures, or take pains for admissions and other documented procedures. Just log on to our university website and our Senior Academic Officer will enroll you. It takes less than five minutes and you receive internationally certified/attested degree within couple of months solely based on your professional experience. ” Indeed, there is no criterion for professional experience of the applicant. You may get even PhD degree with as minimum as one year personal experience. It is all situational and manipulative. Only thing that matters is to pay enrollment fee after logging on to university website, and then, continue to pay unless your accounts are squeezed to figure zero. Once a customer pays enrollment fee, he is in the trap. Now, senior agents (closers) would call him from time to time asking more and more money for attestations from concerning embassies and/or shipment charges until his pocket runs dry. It was quite an embarrassing and decisive day for me to quite Axact, when a customer was probably fed up with paying extra attestation/registration fee. The senior agent asked him to wait for a moment so they could bring Mr.ABC from Egyptian embassy over conference call, who would guide you further as to why that attestation is mandatory. Indeed, there was no Mr.ABC from Egyptian embassy; rather, it was one of senior Axact agents who spoke like native Arabs. He sat beside the agent who was already on phone and pretended to be talking from embassy. They ultimately got him pay more for that attestation. This is one out of hundreds of calls each day. As for the universities that offer degrees on basis of professional experience, all are virtual and have no physical address, though they appear to be located in the United States (and so do agents tell to customers). According to NYT report, these university websites are registered in Cyprus and Latvia. The punch line for all this business is “a degree solely based on professional experience”. An idea that dates back to the close of World War II, when many retired soldiers were jobless and the US Government issued special provisions allowing soldiers to obtain academic degrees on basis of their experience so they could get employment to earn livelihood. Have said all this, I admit the silence I had adopted for so long. However, it always made me uncomfortable to think as to what is going at Axact. Whatever I have said above is, I say on oath, 100% true. I have tried to give neutral inside picture and want readers to decide it is legal or not. This is what has been going on at Axact floors for years. Many employees would say degrees are made-in-Karachi and I would try to shun each possibility as rumor. However, for me, the NYT report has proved to be the last nail on Axact’s coffin. I left Axact within a month of my joining in sales department, thinking it too controversial to continue with. According to agreement, we were bound not to disclose the nature of job as people generally do not understand. Today, all I want is proper investigations that could declare this creepy business as legal or illegal and take practical action accordingly, since it is matter of Pakistan’s reputation in entire world and it is about education, the holiest of human professions. ============ Fake diplomas, real cash: Pakistani company Axact reaps millions By Declan Walsh Published: May 18, 2015 PHOTO: THE NEW YORK TIMES Seen from the Internet, it is a vast education empire: hundreds of universities and high schools, with elegant names and smiling professors at sun-dappled American campuses. Their websites, glossy and assured, offer online degrees in dozens of disciplines, like nursing and civil engineering. There are glowing endorsements on the CNN iReport website, enthusiastic video testimonials, and State Department authentication certificates bearing the signature of Secretary of State John Kerry. “We host one of the most renowned faculty in the world,” boasts a woman introduced in one promotional video as the head of a law school. “Come be a part of Newford University to soar the sky of excellence.” Yet on closer examination, this picture shimmers like a mirage. The news reports are fabricated. The professors are paid actors. The university campuses exist only as stock photos on computer servers. The degrees have no true accreditation. In fact, very little in this virtual academic realm, appearing to span at least 370 websites, is real — except for the tens of millions of dollars in estimated revenue it gleans each year from many thousands of people around the world, all paid to a secretive Pakistani software company. That company, Axact, operates from the port city of Karachi, where it employs over 2,000 people and calls itself Pakistan’s largest software exporter, with Silicon Valley-style employee perks like a swimming pool and yacht. Axact does sell some software applications. But 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. As interest in online education is booming, the company is aggressively positioning its school and portal websites to appear prominently in online searches, luring in potential international customers. At Axact’s headquarters, former employees say, telephone sales agents work in shifts around the clock. Sometimes they cater to customers who clearly understand that they are buying a shady instant degree for money. But often the agents manipulate those seeking a real education, pushing them to enroll for coursework that never materializes, or assuring them that their life experiences are enough to earn them a diploma. To boost profits, the sales agents often follow up with elaborate ruses, including impersonating American government officials, to persuade customers to buy expensive certifications or authentication documents. Revenues, estimated by former employees and fraud experts at several million dollars per month, are cycled through a network of offshore companies. All the while, Axact’s role as the owner of this fake education empire remains obscured by proxy Internet services, combative legal tactics and a chronic lack of regulation in Pakistan. “Customers think it’s a university, but it’s not,” said Yasir Jamshaid, a quality control official who left Axact in October. “It’s all about the money.” Axact’s response to repeated requests for interviews over the past week, and to a list of detailed questions submitted to its leadership on Thursday, was a letter from its lawyers to The New York Times on Saturday. In the letter, it issued a blanket denial, accusing a Times reporter of “coming to our client with half-cooked stories and conspiracy theories.” In an interview in November 2013 about Pakistan’s media sector, Axact’s founder and chief executive, Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh, described Axact as an “I.T. and I.T. network services company” that serves small and medium-sized businesses. “On a daily basis we make thousands of projects. There’s a long client list,” he said, but declined to name those clients. The accounts by former employees are supported by internal company records and court documents reviewed by The New York Times. The Times also analyzed more than 370 websites — including school sites, but also a supporting body of search portals, fake accreditation bodies, recruitment agencies, language schools and even a law firm — that bear Axact’s digital fingerprints. In academia, diploma mills have long been seen as a nuisance. But the proliferation of Internet-based degree schemes has raised concerns about their possible use in immigration fraud, and about dangers they may pose to public safety and legal systems. In 2007, for example, a British court jailed Gene Morrison, a fake police criminologist who claimed to have degree certificates from the Axact-owned Rochville University, among other places. Little of this is known in Pakistan, where Axact has dodged questions about its diploma business and has portrayed itself as a roaring success and model corporate citizen. “Winning and caring” is the motto of Mr. Shaikh, who claims to donate 65 percent of Axact’s revenues to charity, and last year announced plans for a program to educate 10 million Pakistani children by 2019. More immediately, he is working to become Pakistan’s most influential media mogul. For almost two years now, Axact has been building a broadcast studio and aggressively recruiting prominent journalists for Bol, a television and newspaper group scheduled to start this year. Just how this ambitious venture is being funded is a subject of considerable speculation in Pakistan. Axact has filed several pending lawsuits, and Mr. Shaikh has issued vigorous public denials, to reject accusations by media competitors that the company is being supported by the Pakistani military or organized crime. What is clear, given the scope of Axact’s diploma operation, is that fake degrees are likely providing financial fuel for the new media business. “Hands down, this is probably the largest operation we’ve ever seen,” said Allen Ezell, a retired F.B.I. agent and author of a book on diploma mills who has been investigating Axact. “It’s a breathtaking scam.” Building a Web At first glance, Axact’s universities and high schools are linked only by superficial similarities: slick websites, toll-free American contact numbers and calculatedly familiar-sounding names, like Barkley, Columbiana and Mount Lincoln. But other clues signal common ownership. Many sites link to the same fictitious accreditation bodies and have identical graphics, such as a floating green window with an image of a headset-wearing woman who invites customers to chat. There are technical commonalities, too: identical blocks of customized coding, and the fact that a vast majority route their traffic through two computer servers run by companies registered in Cyprus and Latvia. Five former employees confirmed many of these sites as in-house creations of Axact, where executives treat the online schools as lucrative brands to be meticulously created and forcefully marketed, frequently through deception. The professors and bubbly students in promotional videos are actors, according to former employees, and some of the stand-ins feature repeatedly in ads for different schools. The sources described how employees would plant fictitious reports about Axact universities on iReport, a section of the CNN website for citizen journalism. Although CNN stresses that it has not verified the reports, Axact uses the CNN logo as a publicity tool on many of its sites. Social media adds a further patina of legitimacy. LinkedIn contains profiles for purported faculty members of Axact universities, like Christina Gardener, described as a senior consultant at Hillford University and a former vice president at Southwestern Energy, a publicly listed company in Houston. In an email, a Southwestern spokeswoman said the company had no record of an employee with that name. The heart of Axact’s business, however, is the sales team — young and well-educated Pakistanis, fluent in English or Arabic, who work the phones with customers who have been drawn in by the websites. They offer everything from high school diplomas for about $350, to doctoral degrees for $4,000 and above. “It’s a very sales-oriented business,” said a former employee who, like several others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared legal action by Axact. A new customer is just the start. To meet their monthly targets, Axact sales agents are schooled in tough tactics known as upselling, according to former employees. Sometimes they cold-call prospective students, pretending to be corporate recruitment agents with a lucrative job offer — but only if the student buys an online course. A more lucrative form of upselling involves impersonating American government officials who wheedle or bully customers into buying State Department authentication certificates signed by Secretary Kerry. Such certificates, which help a degree to be recognized abroad, can be lawfully purchased in the United States for less than $100. But in Middle Eastern countries, Axact officials sell the documents — some of them forged, others secured under false pretenses — for thousands of dollars each. “They would threaten the customers, telling them that their degrees would be useless if they didn’t pay up,” said a former sales agent who left Axact in 2013. Axact tailors its websites to appeal to customers in its principal markets, including the United States and oil-rich Persian Gulf countries. One Saudi man spent over $400,000 on fake degrees and associated certificates, said Mr. Jamshaid, the former employee. Usually the sums are less startling, but still substantial. One Egyptian man paid $12,000 last year for a doctorate in engineering technology from Nixon University and a certificate signed by Mr. Kerry. He acknowledged breaking ethical boundaries: His professional background was in advertising, he said in a phone interview, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid potential legal trouble. But he was certain the documents were real. “I really thought this was coming from America,” he said. “It had so many foreigner stamps. It was so impressive.” Real-Life Troubles Many customers of degree operations, hoping to secure a promotion or pad their résumé, are clearly aware that they are buying the educational equivalent of a knockoff Rolex. Some have been caught. In the United States, one federal prosecution in 2008 revealed that 350 federal employees, including officials at the departments of State and Justice, held qualifications from a non-Axact-related diploma mill operation based in Washington State. Some Axact-owned school websites have previously made the news as being fraudulent, though without the company’s ownership role being discovered. In 2013, for instance, Drew Johansen, a former Olympic swim coach, was identified in a news report as a graduate of Axact’s bogus Rochville University. The effects have sometimes been deeply disruptive. In Britain, the police had to re-examine 700 cases that Mr. Morrison, the falsely credentialed police criminologist and Rochville graduate, had worked on. “It looked easier than going to a real university,” Mr. Morrison said during his 2007 trial. In the Middle East, Axact has sold aeronautical degrees to airline employees, and medical degrees to hospital workers. One nurse at a large hospital in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, admitted to spending $60,000 on an Axact-issued medical degree to secure a promotion. But there is also evidence that many Axact customers are dupes, lured by the promise of a real online education. Elizabeth Lauber, a bakery worker from Bay City, Mich., had been home-schooled, but needed a high school diploma to enroll in college. In 2006, she called Belford High School, which had her pay $249 and take a 20-question knowledge test online. Weeks later, while waiting for the promised coursework, Ms. Lauber was surprised to receive a diploma in the mail. But when she tried to use the certificate at a local college, an official said it was useless. “I was so angry,” she said by phone. Last May, Mohan, a junior accountant at a construction firm in Abu Dhabi, paid $3,300 for what he believed was going to be an 18-month online master’s program in business administration at the Axact-owned Grant Town University. A sales agent assured Mohan, a 39-year-old Indian citizen who asked to be identified only by part of his name, of a quality education. Instead, he received a cheap tablet computer in the mail — it featured a school logo but no education applications or coursework — followed by a series of insistent demands for more money. When a phone caller who identified himself as an American Embassy official railed at Mohan for his lack of an English-language qualification, he agreed to pay $7,500 to the Global Institute of English Language Training Certification, an Axact-run website. In a second call weeks later, the man pressed Mohan to buy a State Department authentication certificate signed by Mr. Kerry. Mohan charged $7,500 more to his credit card. Then in September a different man called, this time claiming to represent the United Arab Emirates government. If Mohan failed to legalize his degree locally, the man warned, he faced possible deportation. Panicking, Mohan spoke to his sales agent at Axact and agreed to pay $18,000 in installments. By October, he was $30,000 in debt and sinking into depression. He had stopped sending money to his parents in India, and hid his worries from his wife, who had just given birth. “She kept asking why I was so tense,” said Mohan during a recent interview near his home in Abu Dhabi. “But I couldn’t say it to anyone.” Chasing Bill Gates In Pakistan, Mr. Shaikh, Axact’s chief executive, portrays himself as a self-made tycoon of sweeping ambition with a passion for charity. Growing up in a one-room house, he said in a speech posted on the company’s website, his goal was to become “the richest man on the planet, even richer than Bill Gates.” At gala company events he describes Axact, which he founded in 1997, as a global software leader. His corporate logo — a circular design with a soaring eagle — bears a striking resemblance to the American presidential seal. Unusual for a software entrepreneur, Mr. Shaikh does not habitually use email or a cellphone, said several people recruited to his new station, Bol. But his ambition is undimmed: Last year he announced plans for Gal Axact, a futuristic headquarters building with its own monorail system and space for 20,000 employees. His philanthropic vision, meanwhile, has a populist streak that resonates with many Pakistanis’ frustrations with their government. As well as promising to educate 10 million children, Mr. Shaikh last year started a project to help resolve small civil disputes — a pointed snub to the country’s sclerotic justice system — and vowed to pump billions of dollars into Pakistan’s economy. There is no power in the universe that can prevent us from realizing this dream,” he declared in the speech. But some employees, despite the good salaries and perks they enjoyed, became disillusioned by the true nature of Axact’s business. During three months working in the internal audit department last year, monitoring customer phone calls, Mr. Jamshaid grew dismayed by what he heard: customers being cajoled into spending tens of thousands of dollars, and tearful demands for refunds that were refused. “I had a gut feeling that it was not right,” he said. In October, Mr. Jamshaid quit Axact and moved to the United Arab Emirates, taking with him internal records of 22 individual customer payments totaling over $600,000. Mr. Jamshaid has since contacted most of those customers, offering to use his knowledge of Axact’s internal protocols to obtain refunds. Several spurned his approach, seeing it as a fresh effort to defraud them. But a few, including Mohan, accepted his offer. After weeks of fraught negotiations, Axact refunded Mohan $31,300 last fall. The Indian accountant found some satisfaction, but mostly felt chastened and embarrassed. “I was a fool,” he said, shaking his head. “It could have ruined me.” Deception and Threats Axact’s role in the diploma mill industry was nearly exposed in 2009 when an American woman in Michigan, angry that her online high school diploma had proved useless, sued two Axact-owned websites, Belford High School and Belford University. The case quickly expanded into a class-action lawsuit with an estimated 30,000 American claimants. Their lawyer, Thomas H. Howlett, said in an interview that he found “hundreds of stories of people who have been genuinely tricked,” including Ms. Lauber, who joined the suit after it was established. But instead of Axact, the defendant who stepped forward was Salem Kureshi, a Pakistani who claimed to be running the websites from his apartment. Over three years of hearings, his only appearance was in a video deposition from a dimly lit room in Karachi, during which he was barely identifiable. An associate who also testified by video, under the name “John Smith,” wore sunglasses. Mr. Kureshi’s legal fees of over $400,000 were paid to his American lawyers through cash transfers from different currency exchange stores in Dubai, court documents show. Recently a reporter was unable to find his given address in Karachi. “We were dealing with an elusive and illusory defendant,” said Mr. Howlett, the lawyer for the plaintiffs. In his testimony, Mr. Kureshi denied any links to Axact, even though mailboxes operated by the Belford schools listed the company’s headquarters as their forwarding address. The lawsuit ended in 2012 when a federal judge ordered Mr. Kureshi and Belford to pay $22.7 million in damages. None of the damages have been paid, Mr. Howlett said. Today, Belford is still open for business, using a slightly different website address. Former Axact employees say that during their inductions into the company, the two schools were held out as prized brands. Axact does have regular software activities, mainly in website design and smartphone applications, former employees say. Another business unit, employing about 100 people, writes term papers on demand for college students. But the employees say those units are outstripped by its diploma business, which as far back as 2006 was already earning Axact around $4,000 a day, according to a former software engineer who helped build several sites. Current revenues are at least 30 times higher, by several estimates, and are funneled through companies registered in places like Dubai, Belize and the British Virgin Islands. Axact has brandished legal threats to dissuade reporters, rivals and critics. Under pressure from Axact, a major British paper, The Mail on Sunday, withdrew an article from the Internet in 2006. Later, using an apparently fictitious law firm, the company faced down a consumer rights group in Botswana that had criticized Axact-run Headway University. It has also petitioned a court in the United States, bringing a lawsuit in 2007 against an American company that is a competitor in the essay-writing business, Student Network Resources, and that had called Axact a “foreign scam site.” The American company countersued and was awarded $700,000, but no damages have been paid, the company’s lawyer said. In his interview with The New York Times in 2013, Axact’s chief executive, Mr. Shaikh, acknowledged that the company had faced criticism in the media and on the Internet in Britain, the United States and Pakistan, and noted that Axact had frequently issued a robust legal response. “We have picked up everything, we have gone to the courts,” he said. “Lies cannot flourish like that.” Mr. Shaikh said that the money for Axact’s new media venture, Bol, would “come from our own funds.” With so much money at stake, and such considerable effort to shield its interests, one mystery is why Axact is ready to risk it all on a high-profile foray into the media business. Bol has already caused a stir in Pakistan by poaching star talent from rival organizations, often by offering unusually high salaries. Mr. Shaikh says he is motivated by patriotism: Bol will “show the positive and accurate image of Pakistan,” he said last year. He may also be betting that the new operation will buy him influence and political sway. In any event, Axact’s business model faces few threats within Pakistan, where it does not promote its degrees. When reporters for The Times contacted 12 Axact-run education websites on Friday, asking about their relationship to Axact and the Karachi office, sales representatives variously claimed to be based in the United States, denied any connection to Axact or hung up immediately. “This is a university, my friend,” said one representative when asked about Axact. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” The article was originally published in The New York Times Read the list of sites allegedly run by Axact here =============== Ali S Pakistan Google Chrome Windows says: May 19, 2015 at 4:36 pm This story should be a lot bigger – I’ve noticed that a lot of commenters who had same experience at Axact say the same things. They’re running one of the world’s biggest fake degree scams and are now encroaching upon Pakistan’s media space to legitimize themselves. Anyone who’s seen Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh speak knows that he has ‘con job’ written all over him. And Axact just shot itself in the foot by having its lawyers (who knows if it’s even a real law firm, their manuscript seemed unprofessional) sue an online blog – now New York Times has picked up Axact’s attempt to shut down free speech and it’s going viral around the world. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/19/world/asia/axact-fake-diploma-company-threatens-pakistani-bloggers-who-laugh-at-its-expense.html Shahzad Afzal United Arab Emirates Google Chrome Windows says: May 19, 2015 at 6:39 pm I remember since my university time Axact was a shady company. There were rumors about their “Porn” business as well. But this fake degree empire is even worst than porn business. It would not have brought this much shame to Pakistan. and Axact can’t deny now.. all their sites including Axact.com, freeinsaf.com and even bolnetwork.com are leading to same hosting server which is owned by company. This same server is hosting most of the fake university websites. [Proof] Axact website and Fake University’s websites are owned by Axact itself – See more at: http://www.pakistanprobe.com/2015/05/proof-axact-website-and-fake-university-websites-are-owned-by-Axact-itself.html#.VVs-G_mqqko David Saudi Arabia Google Chrome Windows says: May 19, 2015 at 6:57 pm I worked for Axact for period of 3 months in 2013 as a Senior Brand Manager and I left as soon as I worked out their business model. I can testify that all of what has been said by Kasim is true, most people leave the company realizing their mistake of joining within months without backup employment like I did. We all land on our feet though. But Kasim had more courage than I did leaving such a lucrative package so soon. There are too many websites to count and the revenue is within the billions by now. The trouble with Axact is, and this is something that I have always maintained, they have a fantastic ERP product portfolio that was put together by some of the sharpest minds in the country. They just chose the easy money route. I must also point out here that the company does not and has never participated in building or maintaining porn websites. That is just a rumor. They buy space to host their fraudulent websites from GoDaddy so they do not even host the content. Jagreets Google Chrome Windows says: May 19, 2015 at 7:13 pm What is DHA? In article mention many office floors(at least in DHA)? mango Pakistan Mozilla Firefox Windows says: May 19, 2015 at 7:47 pm @Jagreets DHA is Defence Housing Authority. Its an area in Karachi where offices, banks and residential bungalows are located. AXACT’s Karachi building is located in DHA area. merchant India Google Chrome GT-I8552 Build/JZO54K) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/42.0.2311.111 Mobile Safari/537.36 says: May 19, 2015 at 8:04 pm Surprised to see you pakis surprised. conjob was the way you got your country. .aap log toh hotey hee sapoliya ho.. shahbaz Google Chrome Windows says: May 19, 2015 at 8:07 pm I’m a bit dismayed at all this talk of this company causing a bad name for Pakistan. If that is the only concern, then an equally good solution to Axact’s alleged misdeeds is to cover up the problem, blame NYT and the whistle blowers, complain about foreigners airing our dirty laundry. IF THE ALLEGATIONS ARE TRUE, these people caused real financial and psychological damage to lots of people. If this company was selling fake degrees to cheaters who were looking to buy fake credentials, then the company and their customers deserve each other. However, there are allegations of Axact defrauding a large number of people, many of whom spent a great deal of money attempting to improve their lives. I am heartened that people like Jehan Ara had already called them out. I am further encouraged that many of their employees saw what they were doing and decided to give up lucrative salaries in favor of cleaner living. Hindu Hater Pakistan Google Chrome Windows says: May 19, 2015 at 8:32 pm @merchant kiyu yeh sapoliya teri behn ki choot man ghus gaye han kiya. Kutti ka bacha hindu. apnay kam say kam rekho. jo tumhari basoon man ho reha ha sari duniya ko pataa ha. Zoya Anwar Pakistan Google Chrome Windows says: May 19, 2015 at 8:55 pm Yes! I already listen this type of story form my one friend Sumayra. But I can’t believe that time. But today after reading this article I must believe on these true stories. Sahil Pakistan Google Chrome Windows says: May 19, 2015 at 9:19 pm I heared Dr. Aamir Liaqat also got his BA and Phd. from Axact. Is that true??? Farooq Pakistan Google Chrome Windows says: May 19, 2015 at 9:38 pm In keeping with high standards of journalism, ethics and legal obligations, Forbes has removed the defamatory NYT story which they referred in their article. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2015/05/18/the-worlds-largest-fake-diploma-mill-finally-exposed/ choli United States Mozilla Windows says: May 19, 2015 at 10:19 pm fuck you merchant. you hindu bastard. yehya Mozilla Firefox Windows says: May 19, 2015 at 11:07 pm Farooq- well hello there, mister Axact Enterprises Public Relations department. YLH Pakistan Safari iPhone says: May 19, 2015 at 11:46 pm Moderators please remove this Merchant joker and those abusing him. timely Germany Mozilla Firefox Windows says: May 20, 2015 at 12:18 am Conjob to get a country – that’s what he said. Is it wrong? It is the speciality of this kaliyuga. you get nothing without con-jobbing in kaliyuga. hindu scripts say that and they are more honest and accurate than those of other religions. – Sincere human beings never end up creating a country or society full of fascism and dishonesty, irrationality and violence-glorification. Rafiq United States Mozilla Firefox Windows says: May 20, 2015 at 1:29 am yet another scam and theivery emanating from our country of pakistan. First, AQ Khan then Bin Laden and now Axact. Better stop Bol now before it stops us all, otherwise sabki bolti band ho jayegi. Axact Scandal Germany Google Chrome Windows says: May 20, 2015 at 1:51 am This is one of the biggest scam in the history and really feel back the man behind all this is a Pakistani! Anum Pakistan Mozilla Firefox Windows says: May 20, 2015 at 2:41 am i was part of AXACT in when i realize the nature of work i resigned from designation as a senior executive brand management within 3 month my JD is to manage fake MUST UNIVERSITY online presence. sherazi Pakistan Google Chrome QMobile i12 Build/KOT49H) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/42.0.2311.111 Mobile Safari/537.36 says: May 20, 2015 at 4:27 am Fuck u all yar plz take a break and think over it its just a fucking article that has divided us. Whatever the case may be we just have to wait and see is it true and the bustards claming to have worked for axect oooo plz cut this crap and prove it that u were part of this organization i can also claim i have slept with sumone wife but is it true think plxxx before reacting sherazi Pakistan Google Chrome QMobile i12 Build/KOT49H) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/42.0.2311.111 Mobile Safari/537.36 says: May 20, 2015 at 4:31 am And my brothers and sisters plx before u defame our beloved country anymore infront of these fucking hindu bastards plx relax at this point of tym we need to look for solutions rather then spraying the shit all around so plx coment but dont become asma jahngir wat a slut she is ;) =============================================