Myanmar’s nominee for finance minister has admitted to listing two degrees from a fake American university on his official resume, the Myanmar Times is reporting.
Kyaw Win, 68, among the 18 ministers proposed to parliament by president-elect Htin Kyaw yesterday, told the paper he was duped by a Pakistan-based software company that created more than 370 false institutions.
“I am not going to call myself ‘Dr’ any more, as I know now that it is a fake university,” he told the Times.
Nonetheless, the master’s degree and PhD from ‘Brooklyn Park University’, one of more than 370 fake institutions created by Pakistan-based software company Axact, remained on his CV when it was released by the National League of Democracy yesterday.
One Facebook user, named as Win Thu, quickly noticed something was awry. He posted an image of the CV to the social media website together with references to a New York Times investigation into Axact from 2014.
The firm stole tens of millions of dollars from students across the world.
“I tried to contact a university in California in 2005 but I failed to get in,” said Kyaw Win. “Later, in 2008, I joined an online course at Brooklyn Park University. I started to study for a thesis but did not complete it. The PhD on my CV is not a real qualification.”
Kyaw Win, who also told the Times he has been nominated to run the finance and planning ministry, worked in the department of planning for more than two decades before joining the finance department for another seven.
He said, if his nomination is approved, that he plans to “develop the economic sector according to [the NLD] manifesto”.
But first, perhaps, it’s time to update that CV.
