How Pakistan’s highest court took suo motu notice of Gulf News report
Pakistan IT firm Axact not just sold fake degrees to more than 200,000 people in 197 countries, but it had also used impersonation and threat to dupe its clients. In January 2018, the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Mian Saqib Nisar, took suo motu notice of media reports, including one published that week in Gulf News’ sister publication XPRESS, which exposed how Axact telesales agents sitting in Pakistan impersonated officials and called UAE-based clients to seek thousands of dollars towards legalisation fees of their certificates. Alarmed by the revelations, Nisar had then directed Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to submit a report on the issue within a week. “Our heads hang in shame due to the Axact scandal ... the scandal has maligned Pakistan globally. Cases pertaining to it are pending in the courts. The director general of FIA should submit a detailed report on the case,” he had said. Nisar said that if the news was true, then one should be prepared to deal with the scandal, but if it was incorrect, then it was Pakistan’s job to defend itself as the scam was sullying the country’s name.
Axact staffer-turned-whistle blower Sayyad Yasir Jamshaid, who now lives in the United States, said Axact had hired professionally-trained call centre agents who could speak in various languages. In fact it was a conversation between a telesales agent and an Arab girl in Al Ain that Jamshaid had overheard, which pricked his conscience and prompted him to expose the company.
“As one of the 110 quality assurance auditors, at Axact’s Karachi headquarters, my job was to listen to the interactions between customers and sales agents. One evening, I picked a call. What I heard shocked me into disbelief. “Speaking in fluent Arabic, an Axact agent was impersonating a US-based UAE diplomat and threatening to take legal action against the Arab woman if she did not pay up $5,000 [Dh18,390] towards legalisation fees for each of her 18 degrees. Now this woman had already spent $60,000 on these certificates over three years,” recalled Jamshaid who also understands Arabic. “But she got so scared that she wired $30,000 to the AXACT owned bogus Cambell University the same night and another $39,100 a fortnight later. Later that week, that telesales girl was given a Rs100,000 bonus for closing the deal. That’s when I decided enough was enough and quit,” he said.
People who use fake degrees could get up to ten years in jail according to UAE law.
Random calls made to around 20 professionals flaunting phony credentials on the website at the height of the scandal in 2015 had revealed that many were unsuspecting victims. Dr R.S., who works for a reputed hospital in Dubai, said she couldn’t believe her PhD in quality management from Midtown University was worthless. She had spent Dh40,000 on the ‘course’. An Indian schoolteacher in Dubai, who had spent $70,000 to acquire degrees from Axact-run Gibson and Midtown, even faced jail after being caught in a web of deceit.