Following a stunning report on Axact’s global fake degree operations published in the New York Times on May 18, Atlantic Media group’s digital publication Quartz on Tuesday took a deeper look at Axact’s chief executive and founder.
The man who wanted to be “richer than Bill Gates” and whose company claims to have a presence in “six continents, 120 countries and 1,300 cities”, paid only Rs 26 in income tax in 2014, a fact first made public by local Pakistani journalist Ahmed Noorani in mid-April, the report found.
Based on the lowest individual tax rate in Pakistan, Shaikh’s total declared annual income was just Rs 400,520, or a little above Rs 33,377 a month.
The Quartz report found that Axact was only registered in June 2006, according to the records of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), and only had paid up capital of Rs 6 million, according to SECP’s 2010 records.
Last fiscal year, Axact paid a little above Rs 1.8 million in corporate tax according to FBR, putting the company’s earnings a little above Rs 5.5 million (at a 34% corporate tax rate)
Again I shall return to the theme of law and order, but first begin by acknowledging that the security services have started doing a stellar job and there appears to be a clear focus and determination on being very tough on major criminals. Recently, there was the AXACT financial fraud (I shall operate on the working assumption that indeed such a fraud did occur on a large scale). Clearly then, this is also a major crime and the question becomes what to do with the perpetrators of this fraud. By now, no one would be surprised were I to suggest execution of the top 2 or 3 criminals associated to this crime. A high profile case like this is exactly the sort of major crime where unambiguous messages need to be sent by the state. Convicted major criminals should understand that capital punishment will no longer be a theoretical possibility but a practical inevitability.
Comments are closed.