Cobham says employees at chopper unit bought fake degrees

The company made the disclosure after a BBC radio programme said the workers, including two helicopter pilots, from its FB Heliservices, now called Cobham Helicopter Services, had bought the degrees from a firm called Axact between 2013 and 2015.

One of the employees, speaking anonymously to the BBC, said soon after he had been given a contract to work on the Caribbean island of Curacao, the local government decided all those working in the territory had to have a degree.

"We looked into distance learning, and contact was made with this online university. It was just something that needed to be done to keep working in the country," he was quoted as saying.

"Everyone knew they were not bona fide. But no-one had a problem with it."

Cobham chief executive David Lockwood said in a statement on Tuesday that he had instructed a law firm to investigate the matter “as soon as I was made aware of this issue”.

He said the three month probe, which concluded in June 2017, found the issue was “entirely unrelated to the performance of their roles, and had no impact upon the safety of any of its operations or the training of any individuals in the United Kingdom or elsewhere”.

“Procedural and disciplinary actions have been taken to address the issues raised and the matter is now closed," he said.

Thousands of UK nationals the "degrees" from a multi-million pound "diploma mill" in Pakistan, the BBC report said.

Apart from Cobham, buyers included NHS consultants and nurses.

Axact, which claims to be the "world's largest IT company", operates a network of hundreds of fake online universities run by agents from a Karachi call centre.