Politicians Are Getting in Trouble Over Fake Qualifications

(Bloomberg) -- Politicians in eastern Europe are having a harder time getting away with a bad habit: inflating credentials by cheating to obtain fancy qualifications.

The latest to face judgment is Serbian Finance Minister Sinisa Mali. A Belgrade University ethics committee ruled Thursday that he had engaged in “non academic behavior” and called for his doctorate thesis to be annulled because he copied from other authors without citing their work.

Similar cases prompted Hungarian President Pal Schmitt to resign in 2012 and two Czech ministers to quit last year. In Ukraine, former President Viktor Yanukovych -- toppled by protesters in 2014 -- struggled to convince voters he held a PhD in economics. He didn’t help himself by misspelling ‘professor’ on his application to run in an election.

The phenomenon is global too: just this week, a senior adviser in U.S. President Donald Trump’s State Department stepped down over accusations she fabricated a qualification, made up a role at the United Nations that didn’t exist and created a fake Time Magazine cover with her image. She denies wrongdoing.

But there’s a greater eagerness to over-egg scholarly achievements in Europe’s east that dates back to communist times, when having an academic title attached to one’s name was a must to scale the ladders of politics and powerful state institutions.

“It meant you distinguished yourself from the crowd where everyone was meant to be equal,” said Bohumil Kartouz from the EDUin think tank in Prague. “We still use academic titles in everyday communications, where people frequently overuse them.”

The difference is that nowadays officials face more scrutiny than their communist-era predecessors, who were shielded by tight censorship rules. Transparency has increased dramatically, with mandatory wealth reporting and constant media attention.

Fake Diploma

Klavdija Markez became Slovenia’s shortest-serving education minister when she stepped down five days into the job in 2015. Reporters had discovered she plagiarized more than two-thirds of her masters thesis.

In Bulgaria, the former head of an agricultural fund was handed a suspended prison sentence in 2012 after admitting to having faked her diploma.

Despite landing in hot water, however, some officials battle on.

Andrej Danko remains Slovakia’s parliament speaker and still leads the country’s main nationalist party, even after his former university confirmed media reports that he plagiarized his doctorate thesis.

While former Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta lost his PhD after allegations surfaced that he plagiarized parts of his thesis, he refused to resign. Eventually forced out by a separate scandal, he’s now made a political comeback, recently helping to topple the government.

Back in Serbia, students called for Mali to step down after the ruling. He still enjoys the support of President Aleksandar Vucic, however, and is expected to keep his job.

He said before the hearing that he’d be “delighted” to tear up and rewrite his thesis, although after the ruling he said he hadn’t plagiarized.

“I know that I didn’t do it,” Mali told state news wire Tanjug. “I will address this issue in the next few days separately and, for now, what I care about is the Serbian budget and things that I am being paid for.”

--With assistance from Michael Winfrey, Slav Okov, Andra Timu, Daryna Krasnolutska, Jan Bratanic and Radoslav Tomek.

To contact the reporters on this story: Gordana Filipovic in Belgrade at gfilipovic@bloomberg.net;Lenka Ponikelska in Prague at lponikelska1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrea Dudik at adudik@bloomberg.net, Michael Winfrey

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