3,000 fictitious "postgraduate students" received deferrals: management of Zaporizhzhia university will be tried for scheme worth over 50 million hryvnias, - Prosecutor General. PHOTOS
An indictment has been filed against nine members of a criminal organisation who organised a large-scale scheme to falsely enrol conscripts into postgraduate programmes in order to obtain deferrals from mobilisation.
This was reported on the Telegram channel by Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko, according to Censor.NET.
The scheme operated at a private university in Zaporizhzhia
The organiser of the scheme was the rector and owner of a private university in Zaporizhzhia. He involved his daughter – the vice-rector for academic and research affairs – three other vice-rectors, the deputy director of one of the institutes, the head of the information systems centre, and staff from the postgraduate department.
"The fictitious studies were arranged through document forgery, the entry of false data and illegal interference in the state Unified National Electronic Database on Education. Admission documents were backdated, and the so-called 'postgraduate students' did not actually study," explained Kravchenko.
3,000 postgraduate students received deferrals
Over two years, nearly 3,500 men of conscription age were illegally registered through the scheme. Around 3,000 of them were granted grounds for deferment from mobilisation.
Meanwhile, the authorised intake quota for postgraduate studies was exceeded by 13 times: the institution was entitled to admit no more than 265 postgraduate students.
The price of the matter
As noted, the cost of the "services" consisted of the official tuition fee, nearly 20,000 hryvnias for two semesters, and a separate illegal benefit: ranging from several hundred to over 260,000 hryvnias per person.
In total, the scheme brought its organisers over 50 million hryvnias.
The Ministry of Education and Science revoked the university’s licence
The scheme was exposed after the operator of the Unified State Electronic Database for Education (USEDE) detected a suspicious mass registration of applicants and contacted the police. Following this, the Ministry of Education and Science revoked the university’s licence to train postgraduate students.
All the accused are charged with participation in a criminal organisation, bribery, document fraud, interference with IT systems and obstruction of the lawful activities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The organiser of the scheme faces additional charges of establishing a criminal organisation and laundering illegally obtained funds.
