University admission: Dh300k forgery bribe

Two administrative coordinators of a university allegedly accepted about Dh300,000 in bribe from 20 students for forging their English language results and offering them admissions, the Dubai Criminal Court heard.

MN, 32, Russian, and MA, 33, Lebanese, allegedly cracked the university’s electronic system and forged results of English language tests for a couple of students and accepted forged certificates from some others by accepting bribes.

The incident came to light earlier this year when the director of the admission department at the university noticed that the files of five students did not contain the English language pass certificates. So, she questioned MN and he presented photocopies of pass certificates for two students.

The admission director, NH, 37, Lebanese, told the court, “I checked with ILETS and found out that these photocopies had no originals. I confronted MN.

The suspect said he was aware that the certificates were forged and that he was only following instructions from MA.

MA was terminated by the university two years earlier for bad performance, the court heard.

The Russian staff explained that MA called him and requested him if he could do him a favour. He denied getting any money from his Lebanese ex-colleague for the service.

The university, meanwhile, sacked the Russian staff and dismissed, SS, the student involved in this case. SS admitted to paying Dh20,000 to the university’s former Lebanese staff against arranging forged certificate.

“I learnt that MA can help in arranging certificates for English language assessment test from a Yemeni student MQ and I handed over Dh20,000 to the Lebanese ex-staff via MQ and his friend RH.

Meanwhile, two other students - MQ and RH  - were also dismissed. The two also admitted that they had paid the Lebanese ex-employee Dh20,000 for forging certificates.

Investigation by the university revealed that apart from the above three, eight other students had submitted forged certificates and nine students who had their exam resulted tampered with by the two suspects in order for them to gain admissions.  Of these, the university dismissed six students and slapped penalties against 14.

To all these, the Russian suspects claimed that he had only accepted the forged copies as per instructions of his ex-colleague.

Police confiscated forged certificates from the Russian. He was arrested when he visited the university after he was dismissed in the case.

The Lebanese ex-staff was arrested a week later.

The court will reconvene on December 9.

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