Dubai university officials jailed for accepting bribes

Two university officials accepted bribes in exchange for enrolling students. The administrators at the American University in Dubai (AUD) have been sentenced to three years each in jail. Dubai Court of First Instance was told the men took Dhs300,000 from 20 students. The court ordered that the pair, a 32-year-old European and 33-year-old Arab, be fined Dhs174,000 and deported after their sentence. The deception involved allowing students who did not have the English language courses necessary to study to get a place. All 20 had failed such courses. As part of their jobs, the pair processed the TOEFL and IELTS exams and they accepted money to alter the records to show a pass. The Arab was fired in 2012 for unrelated poor performance. Then in January of this year, the university noticed documents for five students were not in the system – but they had been enrolled. The changes were traced back to the two men. “We discovered the two employees put the documents in the system showing that those students passed the exams,” the head of admissions said in court records. She said the European worker now on trial showed her copies of certificates. “I found later that there were no original documents,” she said. A police officer told the court the European appeared to have become wealthy very quickly, buying a luxury car and had intending to start his own business. ali.shouk@7days.ae