Right medication, right dose, right time and right route

LAHORE: Languishing behind bars after being handcuffed and remanded in the custody of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for running a huge diploma mill that has till date issued thousands of phony educational degrees worldwide, the Axact owners are today vehemently blaming that only a small section of the Pakistani Press for carrying out their media trial.
The Shoaib Sheikh-led Axact team members have not realized for a moment perhaps that they are themselves to be blamed for flashing the headlines on an hourly basis. There is this most famous maxim in the news business: “When a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a dog that is news.”
In his 1899 book “The stolen story and other newspaper stories,” an American Pulitzer Prize-winning author and dramatist Jesse Lynch Williams (1871-1929) had first used this phrase and it is not Latin for the Axact boss Shoaib Sheikh to shrug his shoulders and say he doesn’t understand it!
Axact and its much-trumpeted sister concern Bol TV made their own news by offering mouth-watering salary packages, even ranging between Rs 7.5 million and Rs 12.5 million monthly for some key staffers, and then the widely-advertised allied perks and glittering privileges were simply flabbergasting, absolutely astounding and fascinating for people to turn their heads towards the Axact offices.
Bol TV has thus been the talk of the town and not just a fodder for the gossip for Pakistan’s newsmen. Before its formal launch, Messrs Axact had raised many eyebrows by extensively advertising its in-house and external facilities such expensive luxury cars with chauffeurs, bullet proof vehicles with security guards, protocol officers, courteous stewards, rented staff houses in posh localities, swimming pools, recreation yachts, soothing salons, premium clubs, scrumptious food cafeterias, corporate resorts, celebrity lounges, valet parking, movie theatres and gymnasiums etc at such a large scale.
What to talk of any American, European, Indian, Middle Eastern or Far Eastern media house, even the largest global Multi-National Companies (MNCs) earning billions of dollars in revenues have never practically offered such dream packages to their highest-ranking employees.
The Bol TV website still highlights the princely salary packages on offer.
The June 9, 2013 Bol Tv advertisement appearing in a section of Press also states that it was a complete media enterprise “consisting of platforms that are important and relevant to our audience, including Television (News, Entertainment, Sports & other channels), Digital Media (Web, Social Media and Media Apps), print media (Newspaper and Magazines), cinemas and movies, theatre and Radio.”
The Bol TV website states: “BOL Group is a revolution that will actively seek to bring about economic prosperity for its members, stakeholders, and the media community as a whole. We will do this through forward looking ideas, career structure, improved and automated systems & process, globally competitive compensation & benefits, and excellence in recognition.”
It adds:”BOL is setting a precedent that will bring about a revolution in the lives of every individual in the Media Industry, with its visionary leadership BOL is bringing the best practices in the media industry to the forefront via state-of-the-art infrastructure, automated systems & processes, and above all by offering an unmatched lifestyle and salary packages that are far above the industry average to its employees. All this will bring about visible changes in the lives of every individual, presenting a developed Pakistan to the whole world.” By the way, the Axact CEO Shoaib Sheikh has also been mentioning all this in his speeches and interviews for the last two years at least.
It surely was an unusual entry for a company that claims that it has a net worth of over $20 billion and has a global presence across six continents, 120 countries and 1,300 cities with more than 25,000 employees.
Projecting itself as a corporate entity with more than 50 per cent of the revenues and profits of every global market, Axact still says on its website that it is three times larger than any public or private company in Pakistan and till the filing of this report, it has not been shy or hesitant claiming that it happens to be the country’s largest exporter of Information Technology (IT) services and contributing 65 per cent towards the net national IT-related exports.
Interestingly, Axact is not a member of the Pakistan Software Houses Association (PASHA), a relevant IT trade body, and its Chairman, Dr. Shoaib Khan, has already confirmed this fact on record.
He was quoted as saying that PASHA had no knowledge of the Axact activities as the company had never participated in the events and meetings of the trade association being led by him.
Dr Shoaib Khan had stated that the Axact scam was harmful for software houses in Pakistan and had demanded of the government to investigate the fraud through the FIA...something that happened just hours later.
But despite all this, Messrs Axact has announced that within four years from now, its software exports would surge to US$50 billion, meaning thereby that it will stand among the top 100 companies of the world. How unbelievable!!
You ask any local software company of any size or any global IT giant listed on the New York Stock exchange about Axact or its business activities and none has any idea.
How very strange and confusing!! How was all this happening unabated for years?
A few members of the Pakistan Software Houses Association think that by seeking tax incentives to the tune of billions of rupees under the garb of being a software exporting firm, Messrs Axact Limited has resorted to forgery and fraud with the IT industry, business community and the national coffers.
Axact has also been boasting with a lot of audacity that it is not only ranked as the “Top choice employer” in Pakistan, but also has more than two billion users worldwide and a strong customer base of 40 million across the world.
Remember, the world population is just over 7 billion today and Axact says every third human residing on planet Earth today knows about it!!
Even a tentative glance at what this correspondent has penned down above would bear ample testimony to the fact that Axact’s fake degree scandal was extremely important for the local media to cover at such a large scale and in so much depth.
The Axact Private Limited has kept its allegedly illegal business of education secret from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) as it is registered as an information technology company only, which is a gross violation of the Companies Ordinance 1984.
It is imperative to note that the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) had issued Bol Tv’s licence on an application filed by Messrs Labbaik (Pvt) Ltd (one of two front companies pitched by Axact).
The paid-up capital of Messrs Labbaik was just Rs 7 million at the time of seeking the television license.
Ironically, PEMRA had not bothered to explore or explain as to how this company was spending more money on its own employee than it’s paid up capital!!
If the actual investor was somebody local, why did he not insist that his investment be shown in the paid up capital of Labbaik!!
And if the major funding was from any off-shore source, which meant a foreign owned company was seeking Bol TV’s license, it was ineligible to enjoy this privilege under Section 25 (Ordinance XIII) of the amended PEMRA Ordinance 2002 that states that license cannot be given to any foreign NGO or a foreign company organized under the laws of any foreign government and the majority of whose shares are owned or controlled by foreign nationals or companies whose management or control is vested in foreign nationals or companies.
Following FIA’s initial probe, it had transpired that the third director of Axact, who is not a person but a company named as Axact LLC, which is registered in the Dubai Free Zone, which owns 5,999,998 of the 6 million Axact shares. Shoaib and his wife Ayesha have only two shares.
Is Shoaib the front man of the company which has 99.999 percent shares?
How interesting and intriguing to be an ideal script for a blockbuster Hollywood action movie!! But PEMRA had not even probed if the foreign investment was through legal means or was it drug money?
PEMRA didn’t even investigate if such a huge investment was made in media to launder black money!
It is noteworthy that the Interior Ministry first grant security clearance to those seeking license for BOL TV and had later withdrawn it, but PEMRA didn’t move an inch to cancel the license under review.
Shoaib Sheikh had later moved court and had successfully obtained a stay order in his favour. As far as the Pakistani courts are concerned, they are extremely good at granting stay orders without pondering over the ramifications.
As far as the fake degree scandal is concerned, just a handful of enlightened columnists and news commentators still think media has made a mountain out of a mole hill and has blown the issue out of proportion only to halt the progress of Axact and to block the entry of its Bol TV Network.
They have viewed that many scandals have surfaced in Pakistan since its inception, but none has been given so much importance in media, asserting that had Axact not planned to launch its Bol Tv, no media house would have highlighted the degree scandal so religiously and for so many days.
These analysts are heard criticizing since the last week in air-conditioned drawing rooms and hotel lobbies that instead of booking the culprits of the June 2014 Model Town Lahore police firing case, the sitting government shown a lot of efficiency in taking Axact owners to task at the behest of a few media tycoons. Well, such analogies are like bailing out a suspect, say a murderer or a rapist, whose act was caught by camera. Now instead of looking into that camera proof, say a tape or photograph, it is being said that those accusing the suspect are actually settling a personal score. It’s like “look, the accuser’s father had a feud with the father of the accused.” These handful analysts don’t look at the available evidence obtained from Axact offices by the FIA officials - thousands of degrees - that would go the court. Obviously, the FIA has collected massive evidence and is still in process of investigation whose final outcome would determine the fate of this case, but does that mean media should not talk about it. Axact has been denying its involvement in scandal and media has accommodated its point of view also. And what is logic behind this argument that all that Axact is facing today is because of the TV channel that was about to be launched by the accused?
Pakistani media, ever since the creation of Pakistan, has always raised full-throated voice over one scandal after the other like the once being mentioned below. Were the persons involved in these scandals TV or newspaper owners? No, not at all; not in Pakistan, not even world. Look at the example I am giving below. Some of these scandals were against the sitting rulers. Were these rulers media owners? Well, in the Model town firing case, an FIR has already been registered and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif are both named in it.
For many PML-N foes, the case will prove a live wire for the incumbent Sharifs in times to come. And then how can Axact compare apples to oranges.
Even if the Model Town firing case was not investigated; was there any logic in ignoring all culpable crimes committed after that sad incident?
Axact has been hoodwinking money from all over the world at the cost of country’s repute.
But then you can never stop conspiracy theories from being born. One such theory says that those supporting still supporting Axact publicly or expressing solidarity with its owners were either promised to be hired in near future in BOL TV and its allied publications or had signed agreements and have even pocketed a good chunk of money in advance. The architects of another conspiracy theory have opined that the Axact supporters in media were actually toeing a foreign agenda aimed at defaming Pakistan. God knows what is true and what is not——but Pakistan is certainly a very fertile land for the birth of such conspiracy theories.
These theories know no bounds—-they can make any head bow and any targeted soul run for cover.
We all know the Asghar Khan case and the Supreme Court verdict was discussed and flashed in all sections of media for weeks, and so were the infamous NRO, NICL Case, Rental Power, the Bank of Punjab scam, the Hajj scam, the Cooperatives rip-off, the Yellow Cab fiasco, the Pakistan Steel Mills corruption case, the bank loan write-off scam and numerous human trafficking, fake parliamentary degree issues and visa frauds etc.
A few of these afore-cited scams were unveiled by the print media, much before the birth of a vibrant electronic media in Pakistan.
The Pakistani media had also highlighted the conviction of a few top national politicians abroad in money-laundering cases and when the son-in-law of another prime political family was found misbehaving with a bakery employee in Lahore a few years ago; it was the extensive and timely media coverage that had made this privileged scion of the known and affluent family land in jail for a night.
Now, these financial bungling cases surfacing in different eras were brought under the spotlight when no new electronic channel was due to be launched!
Similarly, the world media has shed a lot of light on US President Richard Nixon’s Watergate scam, Bill Clinton’s extra-marital affairs, the British phone-hacking scam leading to the unceremonious closure of the once largest-selling newspaper “News of the World,” the US Interior Secretary Albert Fall’s $ 0.4 million corruption in the 1922 Mammoth Oil and Pan America Petroleum scandal and the 1963 Profumo Affair in which British Secretary of State for War John Profumo had to lose job after his affair with a Soviet spy Christine Keele had come into light etc etc.
The list is very long and unending, but we only came to know about these scams after Press had highlighted them globally. We have all read about the Indian Bofors scandal, which was a major political scandal that had occurred between Sweden and India during 1980s and 1990s. The Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi and several other members of the Swedish and Indian governments were accused of receiving kickbacks in a US$1.3 billion deal from a Swedish arms company called Messrs Bofors AB.
Print media had also led the race of exposing scams in India, US and Europe etc.
But then Shoaib Sheikh, as a few people allege, an IBA Karachi graduate with Majors in Marketing, has behaved like a highly-educated “conman,” who knows this art of mesmerizing people. What he reveals is interesting, but what he hides is probably startling. You do not have to be the Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud to know that con men influence minds by talking of religion, patriotism and are heard praising their families. They just do this to divert the public attention from the actual issue, so that actual reality and facts remain covered.
Shoaib Sheikh, son of a lawyer, has also been good at silencing his critics both in conventional Press and those chirping on social media by sending them prompt court notices.
Till the surfacing of the Axact degree scandal, the strategy had worked and none has ever succeeded in asking him any real question. To counter criticism, he has reportedly hired innumerable lawyers for the purpose. In other words, he had never let anybody probe what he was doing. Bol TV had surely provided him a golden cover-up opportunity to conceal his misdeeds. Some of the finest journalists were hired by him for this purpose.
But then rumour mills were also churning out theories at the same time that the few big names hired by Bol TV were actually parked there, so that they could not find a venue to speak about democracy and express their democratic minds.
This correspondent hasn’t understood much of this conspiracy theory, but then everybody doesn’t spell out everything explicitly. One has to read between the lines. While a few of these newsmen, who have recently left Bol TV after unveiling of the Axact scam, have said they have relinquished jobs “on the voice of conscience,” a couple have been honest enough to confess they were blinded by the sparkle and shimmer of a lavish life-style, making one recall the 1969 Hollywood movie “The Mackenna’s Gold,” which was directed by J. Lee Thompson and stars like Gregory Peck and Omar Sharif had acted in it.
The captivating “Mackenna’s Gold” is actually the story of how the lure of gold corrupts a diverse group of people.
Coming to Axact’s deceptions and threats, the “New York Times” has already written about it in detail on May 17 last.
The prestigious US newspaper had written: “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.”
The “New York Times” had gone on to add: “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.”
It had further stated: “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 had 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.”
And quite recently, investigative reporters of “Geo News” had succeeded in meeting Kureshi’s brother at the Karachi address he had given at a New York court. Kureshi has turned out to be a low-ranking Axact employee and his brother has confirmed it too!!
It goes without saying that since Axact’s technical paraphernalia predominantly lies in countries like the United States, there is no way it can escape an appropriate legal and administrative action there as well because fake degrees can export terrorists.
These terrorists can then seek job visas in the US, Europe and other parts of the world and can even end up being hired as pilots, doctors and engineers etc. An extremely risky affair indeed!
As far as other implications of fake degrees are concerned, people can buy these worthless pieces of papers and get perched on high slots, whereby depriving the deserving humans from excelling on merit.
At a juncture when Pakistan is facing a barrage of allegations that it breeds terrorists, Axact has surely inflicted an astounding thud to country’s image. Pakistan wasn’t far from being blamed as an ideal land for fake degree seeker had the government not come out of a slumber.
And had action not been taken swiftly against Axact, there was a strong possibility that all Pakistani students and workers doing degree-requiring jobs abroad would have been looked at with a lot of suspicion...hence hurting the volume and influx of the much-needed foreign remittances.
At the same time, Pakistani students who burn their midnight lamps to earn degrees are passed over by those get jobs by buying degrees within hours. Why this point is not being emphasised that Pakistan’s diligent human capital is at stake in the hands of fake degree traders?
The Pakistani government has thus done well by acting in time and apprehending the culprits because had a bit of more time passed, not only could the vital evidence have been destroyed but the country might also have landed in serious trouble at the hands of any “Axact-assisted fake graduate,” who could have committed an act of terrorism in any part of the world. It would have been very difficult to defend the country then.
A stitch in time saves nine.
(sabirshah69@hotmail.com)