ISLAMABAD // Pakistan carried out raids on a firm accused of running a global fake degree empire on Tuesday, confiscating computers and questioning employees as the scandal deepened.
The firm Axact was accused by the New York Times of running a network of hundreds of websites for phoney universities complete with paid actors for promotional videos, reportedly generating tens of millions of dollars annually.
Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) officers swooped on the Karachi headquarters of the company, seizing equipment and records and expelling employees from the building, a member of the raiding party said on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile the company’s Rawalpindi office has been sealed and employees were being questioned at the site, an official said.
The same official said the two employees were being questioned and had not been charged with a crime.
“The raid is still ongoing,” said Mehmood ul Hassan, acting director of the FIA’s cyber crime wing.
“Our team is gathering evidence. Our director general will release all details about the raid once it’s completed.”
The move came shortly after interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told the agency to investigate if Axact was involved in any illegal work “which can tarnish the good image of the country in the world”.
The report by the New York Times, which quoted former employees and analysed more than 370 websites of fake universities, accreditation bodies and other purported institutions, sparked a wave of criticism on social media even as the company denied wrongdoing.
Axact’s media venture named Bol is set to launch a news channel, featuring leading TV anchors and journalists lured from previous employers by high salaries, heightening interest in the story.
The NYT article cited clients from the UAE, US AND Britain who had paid sums ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars for their degrees -- with some believing the universities were real and they would soon receive coursework.
The “university” websites mainly route their traffic through servers run by companies registered in Cyprus and Latvia, and employees would plant fictitious reports about Axact universities on CNN iReport, a website for citizen journalism.
A message on the company's website declared the story "baseless, substandard, maligning, defamatory, and based on false accusations" and added it would sue the New York Times.
* Agence France-Presse