North uni’s dentistry faculty has licence revoked

The dentistry faculty at Morphou’s Cyprus Health and Social Sciences University (KSTU) had its licence to teach temporarily revoked on Wednesday.

The north’s higher education accreditation authority (Yodak) announced the suspension until January 31 next year as investigations continue into a growing scandal regarding the alleged issue of fake diplomas.

The latest arrest made regarding the scandal was on Tuesday evening, with a former private secretary to a former ‘prime minister’, who currently works as a civil servant at the ‘labour ministry’, being taken into custody.

He appeared in court on Wednesday, where police officer Ali Erdelhun said that the man enrolled at the university on September 13, 2022.

He said that on the same day, a total of 61 course grades “were entered [into the university’s database] in the space of a few minutes,” allowing the man to receive a four-year degree certificate on the same day he enrolled.

The “degree”, he said, allowed the suspect to receive a pay rise in his public sector jobs.

Judge Zehra Yalkut Bilgec ordered that he be remanded in custody for two days while the police calculate how much money he obtained under false pretences.