Islamabad: Additional District and Sessions Judge Pervaizul Qadir Memon on Wednesday granted post arrest bail to Axact Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Shoaib Sheikh and his manager operations Viqas Atique in the ‘fake degrees’ case.

Both the accused were granted bail against Rs20,000 surety bonds.

The Axact CEO has been behind bars for over 15 months for allegedly issuing degrees of non-chartered educational institutions online to hundreds of clients and making millions of dollars in the process.

The case surfaced in May last year when The New York Times published a report which claimed that the company sold fake diplomas and degrees online through hundreds of fictitious schools.

Making his argument in court, the counsel for the Axact CEO maintained that the Federal Investigation Agency could not produce substantial evidence against the accused.

He said his client had already been acquitted in a money laundering case and that the Sindh High Court had approved bail for the accused on August 14 against a surety bond of Rs500,000.

The prosecution argued that the investigation agency had recovered bogus degrees from Axact offices and that the company had fraudulently sold these degrees to clients in various countries and brought a bad name to Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2016