A blogger in South Africa picks up the baton on Burkes University, finding a local Chairman/CEO with a degree of embarrassment. Meanwhile HK regulators seem totally relaxed about Leslie Cheng's "doctorate".

Burkes University's South African alumnus
26 February 2016

News reaches us from South Africa that our article Leslie Cheng, Burkes and Turks (16-Jan-2016) has had a welcome knock-on effect. A financial blogger there called QuothTheRaven picked up our story and found that a company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, Net 1 UEPS Technologies, Inc. (Net1, Nasdaq:UEPS) has a Chairman and CEO, "Dr" Serge Belamant, who has been touting "a PhD in Information Technology and Management" (10-K here, page 12), a claim he has been making at least since the S1 Registration Statement in 2005 (page 108). The filings don't say where the PhD was from or that it was only honorary, but a vanity publication called Madison Who's Who has it as a doctorate from "Burkes University".

Net1 late yesterday (South African time) put out a press release (but no SEC filing) stating that two unidentified directors had looked into the "allegations posted on social media" and came to the conclusion that Mr Belamant had been "the unfortunate victim of a scam and that the honorary degree was not legitimate". Mr Belamant had made a "donation" of an unspecified amount before receiving the degree.

At least Net1 had the decency to say something. Meanwhile in HK there has been no announcement from the boards of any of the 6 listed companies on which "Dr" Leslie Cheng Chi Pang serves as a director, nor any of the other companies who have Burkes "alumni" amongst their directors and senior managers. They are apparently unconcerned, and so is the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

© Webb-site.com, 2016

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