Roughly an hour after Pakistan’s Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan announced on media that the government would contact Interpol and other international agencies for assistance in the investigation against fake degree factory, Axact, senior journalists belonging to Axact’s media initiative, Bol Network began dissociating themselves from the company one after another.
Kamran Khan, the president and editor-in-chief (co -founder) of BOL Group, was the first to announce his disassociation from Bol.
The investigative reporter tweeted that while charges against Axact are far from proven in court, his conscience is not letting him continue and that he has decided to part ways with Bol immediately.
Azhar Abbas, the president and CEO of BOL News, also announced his resignation through Twitter, saying that he has resigned from BOL after speaking with his editors and staff. Abbas wished his team great success in future.
Senior journalists and anchorpersons Iftikhar Ahmed, Nusrat Javeed, Wajahat Khan and Asma Shirazi are also among the high-profile journalists who have resigned so far. There are reports that other senior journalists associated with Bol Network would be tendering their resignations soon.
Kamran Khan’s tweet came hardly an hour after Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan’s Axact-centric press conference in Islamabad.
Nisar announced that the mind-boggling scale of a fake degree scam that involves Axact had forced Pakistan to seek help from US, British and other international agencies to step up as well as consolidate the ongoing investigation into the case.
“In two days, the government will write to America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Interpol to assist Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in its probe into the case,” Nisar told a press conference.
“We are contacting Interpol because we can seek information from them on the universities mentioned in the report,” the interior minister said, adding that the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) and Pakistan Software Association have been briefed by FIA regarding developments in the case.
Khan, whose presser seemed to be dedicated to the beleaguered IT company, urged the predatory media to hold their horses and avoid jumping to conclusions.
“Please do not exaggerate as it’s a very sensitive issue. You are also requested to avoid quoting FIA sources in your homegrown stories. It will take at least 7-10 days before an initial enquiry takes shape,” the minister said, adding that the findings of the enquiry would determine whether or not to lodge a formal case against the shady company.
HOW EVENTS UNFOLDED:
Pakistani investigators Tuesday carried out raids on Axact offices in Karachi and Rawalpindi, confiscating computers and holding employees for questioning as the fake degrees scandal deepened.
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, as part of an elaborate scheme that generated tens of millions of dollars annually.
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.
The NYT article cited clients from the US, Britain and the United Arab Emirates 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.
Axact has declared the story “baseless, substandard, maligning, defamatory, and based on false accusations” and added it would sue the New York Times.
The message did not directly address the allegations but accused domestic media rivals of colluding with the US newspaper to plant a slanderous story in order to harm its business interests.
According to an FIA official who did not wish to be named, the allegations raised by the newspaper would be a crime under Pakistan’s Electronic Transaction Ordinance, punishable by seven years in prison.
See these rats jumping a sinking ship. Can anybody believe that KK and others did not know about the wheeling and dealing of BOL owners and the shady business of Axact. Most of them, except IFTIKHAR were amongst those who pREVIOUSLY were on pay of real estate Mafia Don.
Journalism ka janaza 😀 hahahahahahah 😀
gullible&credulous kk can he be expected of investigative reporting,He too has been exposed,
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