Companies cheating Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited on voice mail service
KARACHI- The Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) is sustaining losses to the tune of million of rupees every month due to the deliberate cheating by both the local and multinational companies (MNCs) and transnational banks (TNBs) who covertly use the telecommunication monopoly’s voice mail service to make free international calls, it has been learnt.
Officials in the PTCL informed this scribe that these companies, who were issued licences to transmit data, have attached vertical sets, better known as V-Sets, simultaneously and yet secretly with the service to make free-of-cost offshore calls, causing millions of rupees revenue loss to the PTCL.
The Value Added Division of the PTCL, constituted in 1998 with the purpose to raid offices in order to contain this high-tech crime, is moving with all energies since then. To date it has referred 11 such cases to the higher authorities in Islamabad for appropriate action and now it ponders that what responsibility these authorities would fix on the accused persons, insiders in PTCL informed.
Before preparing these cases, the Value Added Division, together with army monitoring team, police and representative of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), raided the offices of these private companies, most of which are MNCs and TNBS, including foreign banks, offshore electronic giants, etc.
A local company, Finatra, is also alleged to be among the 11 companies charged by the PTCL of using the service illegally. Punitive action by the higher authorities against the company is still awaited.
Officials of the Value Added Division have informed that unknown people were threatening them with dire consequences after they netted criminals involved in this high-tech crime.
Expressing dissatisfaction over the pace of legal action by the higher ups against the accused, a well-placed official in PTCL remarked that people involved in this multi-mullion rupee crime are very influential. They even manage to unseal and often release their seized equipment from police custody, he added.
It is pertinent to mention here that the PTCL has exclusive monopoly over the voice mail service till the year 2002.
Source: The News
Date:6/22/2000
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