The full file of the case against Serdal Gunduz, the 30 per cent shareholder and secretary-general of the now-infamous Cyprus Health and Social Sciences University (KSTU) in Morphou, will be presented in court on September 30.

Gunduz and his assistant Berke Ozbek both appeared in court in northern Nicosia on Tuesday, with Gunduz’s lawyer Doga Zeki claiming there were “serious problems” with the files he had seen so far.

He said he was waiting for “many files” to arrive and requested that evidence used during the preliminary inquest earlier in the year be used in the current case.

Ozbek’s lawyer Hasan Yucelen also said he had not received the documents for which he had asked.

Prosecution lawyer Mustafa Ildeniz said the files were “very complicated”, and said all the files would be submitted by the end of the month, when the court will reconvene.

Gunduz and Ozbek stand accused of 98 charges of fraud, falsifying documents, money laundering, and other similar crimes.

Yucelen had said at a previous hearing in August that students had been told to deposit money into Ozbek’s personal bank account.

Gunduz was initially arrested at the beginning of March and has remained in custody ever since – a fact to which Zeki has repeatedly objected.

However, whenever objections were raised, courts consistently ruled that Gunduz is a flight risk as he holds residence permits in Greece and Russia.

In May’s hearing, police deputy inspector Namik Kemal Baz had said that eight people who had received fake degrees from the university had either gained promotions or pay rises in public sector jobs off the back of their degrees.

In addition, he said, Gunduz had “threatened” the university’s vice rector and forced him to sign degree certificates which had been obtained through illegal means.

The “fake diploma scandal” rocked the north’s higher education system during the first half of the year, with a raft of high-profile arrests having been made in connection with alleged forgeries of documents, bribery, and money laundering.

Gunduz is just one of numerous high-profile figures to have been arrested in connection with the scandal, with former ‘education minister’ Kemal Durust, his wife and high-level civil servant Meray Durust, former Yodak chairman Turgay Avci and board member Mehmet Hasguler, and Ersin Tatar’s bodyguard Serif Avcil having all also been arrested this year.

Work is now underway in the background to ensure such a scandal does not reoccur, with Turkey’s higher education information management system, Yoksis, set to be implemented in the north.

However, the damage done by the scandal is already seemingly having an impact on the north’s universities, with the number of new students being registered at the north’s universities this academic year 11 per cent lower than last year.