A photo of Shoaib Shaikh released by the FIA after he was taken into custody
The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Thursday arrested Shoaib Shaikh, chief executive of Axact and the owner of Bol News, for allegedly bribing an additional district and sessions judge with Rs. 5 million to secure an acquittal in a fake degree case.
Registered at the FIA Anti-Corruption Circle a day earlier, the FIR against Shaikh charges him under Sections 161, 165-A, and 109 of the Pakistan Penal Code, as well as Section 5(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1947. It stated that the Anti-Corruption Circle conducted an inquiry against Shaikh over a reference sent by the additional registrar of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Feb. 17, 2018, adding that former additional district and sessions judge Pervaizul Qadir Memon had admitted to receiving a bribe to acquit Shaikh.
The bribe, reads the FIR, constitutes misuse of authority for illegal personal gains and criminal miscount, adding that a case had been registered against both Memon—for taking an illegal bribe—and Shaikh for being the beneficiary of the transaction. Earlier, Shaikh was summoned by the FIA on Feb. 15 in connection with the case, but failed to appear before the inquiry team.
An IHC division bench had, in April 2018, set aside Shaikh’s 2016 acquittal after the judge confessed before a departmental promotion committee that he had received a bribe to acquit the Axact CEO. The judge was also subsequently sacked.
The Axact fake degree scam became public after The New York Times published an investigative report in 2015 accusing the company of selling fake degrees and diplomas online by scamming students globally through several fictitious schools.