Dubai: Two former administrators of a top university have been jailed for three years each for taking Dh210,000 in bribes from students, who failed in English proficiency tests.

The Russian and Lebanese administrators abused their positions at the university’s admission office and accepted bribes from more than 20 students, who had failed in the TOEFL and IELTS examinations.

The Dubai Court of First Instance convicted the duo of tampering with the students’ examination results, a prerequisite for university admission, and had their names registered between December 2011 and January 2014.

The two accused had pleaded not guilty.

According to Tuesday’s ruling, presiding judge Mohammad Jamal fined the defendants Dh174,000 and $10,000 [around Dh36,700].

“The defendants will be deported after serving their punishments. The forged documents will be confiscated,” said the judge.

Records said the duo accepted bribes ranging from Dh4,000 to Dh20,000 from 13 students.

They also took unspecified amounts of bribes from more than seven students for the same purpose.

The duo exploited the authority granted to them to access the university’s e-system and tampered with the students’ grades, adding remarks and making them eligible to be admitted, according to court records.

A university director said a routine check of the academic results exposed the forgery.

“I discovered that five new students had been enrolled in the university without having their TOEFL and IELTS examination results registered in the system. I checked this out with the Russian defendant, who said he had taken those students’ results but forgot to key them into the system. He showed me the photocopies of the results of two students, an Emirati and a Lebanese, but I told him that the original copy of the examination results is a must. I checked those results on the IELTS’ official website and discovered that they had failed. I called him up and claimed to him that an unknown person had told me over the phone that those results were forged and that he had accepted a bribe to enrol those failed students.

“Immediately he confessed to me that the Lebanese defendant [who had been expelled earlier from the university] called him and asked him to enrol those two students despite their failure … he said he did it as a favour. The university’s top management dismissed the Russian as well. Further investigations unveiled that more students had been enrolled in the university although they had failed the required exams. We came to know that those students had paid around Dh174,000 in total … one student paid $10,000 to the Russian defendant,” claimed the director.

Police arrested the defendants shortly after the university decided to take legal action against them.

Tuesday’s ruling remains subject to appeal within 15 days.