Benny Yap arrested last month, helping police investigations
By
By Amelia Tan & Goh Yi Han
The police said on Friday that Mr Benny Yap was arrested last month. Out on police bail, he said he had tried his best to respond to text messages sent to him. -- PHOTO: FACEBOOK
THE man behind the two schools which have been offering fake degrees has been in the country all this while. Mr Benny Yap Chee was arrested by the police last month, said a police spokesman on Friday. He had been out on bail and helping investigations into the matter.
It also means he would have posted surety and undertaken to report to a police station whenever he is told to do so.
But because his former staff and students could not contact him and his flat in Sengkang appeared to be unoccupied, it looked like he had skipped town.
He was called in on June 25, a week after The Straits Times reported that his private school was handing out bogus qualifications from brand-name institutions in Australia and Britain, including the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). He reported to the police again two weeks later.
His two schools - Brookes Business School and Stamford Global Learning Centre - were ordered shut by the Ministry of Education this week. About 440 students of the two institutions have been left in the lurch, although steps are being taken to transfer them to other schools or to get them refunds.
In a telephone interview with The Straits Times on Friday, Mr Yap, 39, said he had tried his best to respond to text messages from his students but had been busy assisting in the investigations. 'I am a victim too. I just want to make it clear: I am not missing,' he said.
Asked how he was helping his former students, he would only say that he and his staff members were trying to get them places in other schools here. He would neither name these schools nor say whether he was going to give refunds.
He was also tight-lipped on why his neighbours in Sengkang had told The Straits Times that his flat was unoccupied. He would only confirm that he owned the flat, but declined to say more on this 'private matter'.
He refused to be pinned down to a time-frame for when he hoped to resolve the matter, and would only say that he could not comment as investigations were ongoing.
Meanwhile, about 60 former Brookes students are banding together to seek legal advice on getting refunds from Mr Yap. Declining to be named, they said they had engaged lawyers and were looking into suing Mr Yap as a group.
Read the full story in Saturday's edition of The Straits Times
