FIA scrutinises more data from Axact office

KARACHI: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Corporate Crime Circle (CCC) has extended the investigation against Axact and on Wednesday again visited its offices and conducted a scrutiny of further documents.
This activity was carried out after registering an FIR against the top brass of Axact. The FIR lodged against CEO Axact Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh also includes members of the top management. In the FIR, a section of the Money Laundering Act of (AMLA) 2010 has also been included. Moreover, the transactions made by M/s Axact, under the guise of software exports at different banks in Karachi, are also under the purview of the probe.
The FIR was lodged on behalf of the State and the complainant is Saeed Ahmed, FIA CCC Assistant Director. The FIR report says, “The subject case is an outcome of Enquiry No-14/2015 of FIA, Corporate CC Karachi registered against M/s Axact (Pvt) Limited, Pakistan and its management having their office located at Axact House, Main Khyaban-e-Ittehad, Phase-VII, DHA, Karachi on the allegations of offering, preparing, selling, issuing fake and bogus diplomas, degrees, certificates and accreditation certificates of hundreds of fictitious schools, universities and colleges through fraudulent online system an illegally minting millions of Dollars.
“During the course of enquiry it has been established that Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh initially established a company in the name and style of M/s Axact FZ LLC, UAE. Thereafter, accused Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh incorporated the company with the Securities & Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) in the name & style of M/s Axact (Pvt) Ltd, Pakistan with the following shareholders: Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh, Director and CEO with one Share, Ayesha Shoaib Shaikh, Director with one share and 599,998 shares in the name of M/s Axact FZ LLC, UAE.
“Accused Ahmed Shaikh in the capacity of director and CEO of M/s Axact and his management team, comprising Zeeshan Anwer, Viqas Atique, Zeeshan Ahmed, Muhammed Sabir and others, are indulged in preparing, offering, selling, issuing fake, forged, bogus degrees, diplomas, certificates, accreditations of hundreds of fictitious universities, schools, colleges purportedly based at different countries including the USA and Middle Eastern countries through a fraudulent online education system to foreign students.
“Besides preparing offering, selling and issuing fake and bogus degrees, diplomas, the accused directors of M/s Axact (Pvt) Ltd and their managements have also established fictitious and non-existent accreditation bodies and used to fraudulently prepare accreditation certificates of fictitious universities, schools, colleges, in order to portray that the universities, schools and colleges as genuine.
“Accused Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh, CEO, and his management team used the above modus operandi for minting money from students by offering different packages of educational institutions and received huge fees through online credit/ debit cards and deposited the same in the bank accounts of M/s Axact FZ LLC Dubai, UAE.
“Thereafter, the funds were further brought into Pakistan in the bank accounts of M/s Axact (Pvt) Ltd, maintained and operated at Standard Chartered Bank (Pakistan), Habib Bank Limited, Askari Bank Limited, Khyaban-e-Ittehad branch, Karachi, UBL and ABL of Khyaban-e-Ittehad branches, under the guise of software exports. Accused director and management of M/S Axact (Pvt) Ltd used to submit fake/forged/bogus monthly software export statements to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) in order to disguise the illegal origin of their funds.
“During the course of enquiry, a number of incriminating material, articles including fictitious fake certificates, degrees, blank and filled accreditation letters, blank certificates/degrees, validation letters, different stamps, embossing machines used for the commission of above offences have been recovered from the premises of M/s Axact which have been seized under proper seizure memos.
“Besides, the forensic team of the FIA NR3C has examined a few of different systems installed in the premises of M/s Axact (Pvt) Ltd main office, Karachi and issued its initial technical findings and data flow diagram of customer relation management (CRM) of M/s Axact (Pvt) Ltd. The data flow diagram of CRM clarifies online education/ prior learning assessment and initial technical findings thereon explain about CRM web applications used by m/s Axact Pvt Ltd for the purpose of sale of online fictitious fake educational degrees and certificates to different customers.
“It was further stated that, on May-27, 2015 at 1am, on the pointation of accused Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh, CEO of M/s Axact Private Limited, FIA team under the supervision of Javed Iqbal Malik learned Judicial Magistrate-V Karach South broke open the lock of premises of administrative process management (APM) department of M/s Axact located at the first floor of the building bearing plot No-124-C, Jami Commercial, Khyaban-e-Ittehad, Phase-VII, DHA known as the PIA Building.
“The premises consisted of one hall, four rooms and three stores. During the search of premises hundreds of thousands of blank degrees/certificates of hundreds of foreign fictitious Schools, colleges and universities, foreign accreditation organisations, envelopes and other incriminating materials/articles were found in cabinets and racks. Besides the printing materials were also found during the search, they had found degrees/certificates of various foreign schools and universities along with accreditation organizations which were about 44 in number including E D Barton University, Brookdell University and others.
“Moreover, the fictitious accreditation bodies came on record so far during the search are: Gulf Accreditation Council, American Accreditation Council of Business Education, Middle East Accreditation Council, North American Distance Learning Council, Occupational Safety & Fire Sciences Commission, Central American Distance Learning Associate (CADLA), International Board of Accreditation IT Education, Universal Council for Online Education Accreditation (UCOEA) and International Accreditation Agency for Online Universities.
“Since counting a huge number of blank degrees and certificates and other documents and other incriminating material was not possible during the late night and the learned JM South sealed the premises till following day for the purpose of detail counting in presence of on him.
“It was further mentioned that, the above acts of accused persons and recovery of embossing machines and huge quantity of degrees, certificates, accreditation certificates and other incriminating materials and articles recovered from the premises of M/s Axact constitute the commission of offences punishable under section 420/468/471/472/473/474//477-A/109/34 of Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) r/w Section 36 &37 of Electronic Transaction Ordinance (ETO), 2002 and Section 3 &4 of Anti-Money Laundering Act 2010. Hence the case has been registered against accused Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh Director & CEO of M/s Axact and its management.”