ISLAMABAD: The directive of the federal government regarding verification of degrees of its employees has proved to be a revealing task for the Securities and Exchange Commission as a large number of officers have been suspected of having fake and improper degrees.

Due to high number of fake/improper degree cases the SECP had to approach its policy board for legal and political backing, which decided to carry on the degrees verification process.

Sources in the policy board said that the HR department had suspected 15 fake or irregular degrees mainly belonging to the directors, joint directors and deputy directors.

“One person has the graduation and MBA degrees of the same year, while another director has a degree from an American university, which does not exist”, the officials told the policy board.

On average the salary package of a deputy director in SECP is Rs80,000 along with other perks, including a Cultus car, while the package of a joint director includes Rs125,000, a City car and other privileges and the salary of a director in SECP is more than Rs200,000 Corolla and more perks.

The SECP policy board was informed that the scrutiny process will include all the 300 officers and equal number of staff, while the degrees of the chairman and the three commissioners will also be verified.

The policy board was informed that most of the recruitments were made by the former executive director HR, Mansoor Ahsan.

The board chaired by the secretary finance, directed the SECP to take disciplinary action against employees not submitting their degrees and certificates even after three written reminders.

The SECP has forwarded the degrees of around 50 chartered accountants to the ACCA, ICAP or the ICMA, whereas the degrees of local and international universities were being forwarded to HEC.

“Almost 15 cases were being forwarded to the HEC daily and around 50 have been verified,” said an official of the SECP.

The commission had decided in September to start implementation of federal government directives for the verification ofdegrees.

The SECP spokesman said that the scrutiny process was underway and the whole process is expected to be completed in three months.