The great crime

The anti-corruption authority continues its investigations into the ‘fake degrees’ scandal, and most of these certificates are concentrated in one of the highest educational institutions. Investigations revealed that the ‘American University in Athens,’ from which many have earned their degrees, does not exist, and has a single flat in a building. The anti-corruption authority summoned several of those who have fake degrees issued by it for questioning, and their statements contradicted each other. It also questioned a legal man who used to work in the ministry, while one suspects, a senior official, refused to appear at the authority, so he was officially summoned to continue the investigation. The authority questioned another official at the ministry of higher education who confirmed that the university does not exist. The authority also summoned an ‘official’ in an educational institution and accused him for being responsible for sending several students to study in a university that does not exist, so he placed the responsibility on his superiors.

Sources at the anti-corruption authority indicated that there is another group of people that was mentioned by an official at the higher education ministry who received PhDs, and yet did not leave Kuwait to the countries that they supposedly received the PhDs from. The anti-corruption authority found it strange how all those people were appointed without verifying the authenticity of their certificates.They also wondered about the reason for the absence of the supposed coordination between concerned authorities, and the inability of the higher education ministry to introduce an advanced mechanism to verify certificates and discover those suspicious among them, bearing in mind that the investigation committee at Kuwait University met three times only due to disagreements between its members, and more correctly because some of its members did not want to meet. It is clear, from all that, that the issue is limited to two issues:

The first being that the entire state including the government, education ministry, educational and applied institutions, and hundreds or maybe thousands of officials, including ministers and members of Parliament are involved, one way or another, in the issue of fake certificates, either by owning such certificates themselves, or having a vital role in keeping silent towards them, covering up those who hold them, or facilitating by gaining from them. This is apart from their current role in the attempt to obstruct any serious attempt to account for the number and identities of the forgers and hold them accountable for their moral, humanitarian and educational crime.

The second matter is that the crime here is not related to a case of a run over, killing, trespassing or being in a major theft or embezzlement. Rather, it is related to the crime of deliberate participation in corrupting the brains of tens of thousands of students, and gaining millions of dinars through that corruption process, and in turn damaging the mental health of next generations and the dangerous effect on the people’s total ethics, as well as doubting all laws and legislations in which some of those participated either by writing or approval. So is there a moral crime that is bigger than this? Is it not regretful that the majority of parliament members and members of its alien phenomena committee are involved in trivial issues such as non-segregation at swimming pools, and not paying attention to such a crime? Now, did you know the reason behind the nation’s backwardness? —Translated by Kuwait Times