A Sicilian "department", a Bosnian university and hundreds of healthcare diplomas: the double-degree scheme that ended with 13 arrests

Not every credential scam targets students from the developing world. This one targeted Italians.

According to reporting by Žurnal in Bosnia, the Italian Insider, OCCRP and The European Correspondent, students in Italy enrolled in expensive online courses in healthcare professions — physiotherapy, nursing, osteopathy — offered by a Sicily-based body styling itself the "Jean Monnet Department of European Studies", which claimed a double-degree arrangement with the International University of Goražde in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Hundreds of diplomas were issued. The University of Goražde, the reports say, had no permit to operate in Italy, and on 13 March 2024 Italy's minister for universities, Anna Maria Bernini, stated that the ministry had never authorised either the University of Goražde or the Jean Monnet Department in Palermo to award academic degrees.

The case surfaced the way many do: through one family. The mother of an Italian student approached journalists because her daughter, having completed her studies, could not register with the Italian professional association for psychotherapists — her diploma was not accepted. In March 2024 Bosnian prosecutors' Operation "Index" arrested six people connected to the university, according to OCCRP; Italian reports put the total across both countries at thirteen. Prosecutors said diplomas had been issued across many fields and study cycles — including dental medicine, a programme in which the university had no enrolled students — for sums equivalent to normal tuition, and that they had been used in Bosnia, Italy, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Libya and Turkey. Reports described a Sicilian professor as the alleged organiser, said to have targeted Italian students and to have set up a pseudo-university in Switzerland in 2015. Everyone arrested is entitled to the presumption of innocence; the reports concern arrests and charges, not convictions.

The mechanism is worth naming precisely, because it is common across Europe's borders: an unauthorised "department" or "institute" in one country attaches itself to a real, licensed university in another, sells a programme under the borrowed name, and issues documents that look like the real university's diplomas. Students check that the Bosnian university exists — it does — and never ask whether the Italian entity is authorised to teach or award anything.

The test is the same one that applies to a Ghaziabad consultancy claiming a Spanish partner or an African agent claiming to represent a Belarusian university: does the institution that will actually issue the degree confirm, on its own website and by its own email, that this programme, delivered by these people, in this place, is theirs? And does your professional regulator confirm it will accept the result? A double degree that only one side has heard of is a single fake one.