A Pakistani national was sentenced to two years in prison in the north on Friday for his part in the “fake diploma scandal” which has engulfed the north’s higher education sector for over a year.

The man, named as Zeeshan Shahzad Ali, was found guilty of preparing false documents and obtaining money by fraud, having plead guilty on all counts.

He had taken receipt of €10,000 in return for creating three forged student visas, and had also forged diplomas in his own name and “put them into circulation” to be able to enrol himself as a “student” at the institution to which he was attached.

Ali was linked to a “higher education institution” called the “Cyprus Massachusetts Centre of Innovation”.

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That institution is one of 39 such institutions in the north, which operate separately to its 36 universities.

The institutions operate outside the competency of the north’s higher education accreditation authority (Yodak) and are entirely subject to the north’s ‘education ministry’.

The “Cyprus Massachusetts Centre of Innovation” appears to now be closed. Its social media accounts have been inactive since Ali’s initial arrest in March last year.

The case related to the “Cyprus Massachusetts Centre of Innovation” is separate from that which centres around Morphou’s Cyprus Health and Social Sciences University (KSTU).

On that side of the case, Serdal Gunduz, the university’s secretary-general and 30-per-cent shareholder remains in custody with his trial ongoing.

Earlier this month, had also pre-emptively said that should anything happen to him, the person responsible is Turkish MP from ruling alliance party the MHP and KSTU majority owner Levent Uysal.

“If anything happens to me in prison or outside, the person responsible is Levent Uysal. The person who carried out this operation from start to end is Levent Uysal,” he added, before requesting that former Turkish Cypriot chief negotiator for the Cyprus problem Kudret Ozersay be present at his next court hearing.

“I want to be tried fairly. While everyone else is out on bail, I am in prison. Why? Because they do not want me to talk. Because if I talk, too many rocks will move. They are aware of this. They will either kill me in prison or kill me in the prison transport vehicle while I am going back and forth on the road,” he said.

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