Students registered at Cyprus Health and Social Sciences University deny links to recruitment agency

Students who were invited to a court hearing in Guzelyurt, north Cyprus on Thursday to testify in a case involving the Cyprus Health and Social Sciences University (KSTU) denied any links to a student recruitment agency which had been receiving thousands of euros from the university for registering them with the university.

The students were called as witnesses in court in Guzelyurt as part of the preliminary inquest into the ‘fake diploma scandal’, which has rocked the TRNC’s education this this year and has has far been centred on the KSTU.

So far, the university’s 30-per-cent shareholder and secretary-general Serdal Gunduz and its international office manager Amir Shakerifard have both been charged with 130 counts of fraud, document forgery, and other related crimes as part of the preliminary investigation.

The first student called to the stand was a dental student named Berfin Dilan Cetinkaya. She told the court she had registered at the university in person in Guzelyurt on her own, “without any help from any student agency”.

The next was another dentistry student named Didem Bozkurt, who told the court she had applied to the KSTU online through its website in 2022 and began her studies in 2023.

“I did not receive any help from any student agency, I registered myself,” she said.

Gunduz’s lawyer Doga Zeki asked Bozkurt if she remembered correctly, saying the university “did not have a platform for online applications” at the time of her application.

Bozkurt replied that the preliminary application had been made through the website, and that she later received an acceptance letter via the online messaging platform WhatsApp, before paying her tuition fees.

Three more witnesses followed, with one of them, dentistry student Berk Sarlak saying he had registered to begin his studies in 2021 online, and that he had received an email from Gunduz after having filed his application, and the other two witnesses offering similar stories.

After all five students had spoken to the court, the hearing was adjourned until next Tuesday, when more witnesses will be heard.

Thursday’s hearing comes after the first two witnesses, accountant Okan Ozturk and the university’s acting director Mehmet Altuntas, had spoken on Tuesday.

Ozturk had said the university’s founder Ece Uysal had requested he travel from Turkey to the island to carry out an investigation into the university’s accounts, and that his investigation had unearthed “irregular findings” related to a company by the name of “Study in Cyprus”.

He explained, “purchases made with agencies which provide students to universities are subject to a contract. These types of companies receive commission for each student they bring. Since there is no contract for the invoices and some invoices do not include a reference to the student for whom the invoice was issued, it is suspicious.”

He went on to say that during his investigation into the matter, he found lists of students for whom invoices had been paid but found that the students in question had “no connection” with the agencies and had registered themselves at the university without any help from any agency.

Altuntas said he had first been brought to Cyprus with his company Helpco to investigate “suspicious transactions” related to the university.

“We examined the agency invoices and payments … The examinations are the work we conducted with [Ozturk]. We first started examining payments exceeding $100,000 and €100,000. Here, we came across a payment of €146,096 to the ‘Study in Cyprus’ company as commission for students,” he said.

The Morphou case is separate to the case ongoing in Lefkosia, where Gunduz and his assistant Berke Ozbek face 98 charges of fraud, falsifying documents, money laundering, and other similar crimes related to the scandal.

The case in Lefkosia is set to continue on October 1.