Students at sham college got federal aid
By KAREN HOWLETT
From Friday's Globe and Mail
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Toronto — The federal government provided funds to students of the Ottawa Business College, a defunct vocational school at the centre of a major terrorism and immigration probe, until just days before its registration was suspended.
The Ontario Ministry of Education confirmed yesterday that students registered with the college received loans from the federal government totalling $8,910 during the fiscal year that ended Aug. 31, 2001. The ministry revoked the college's registration the next month.
Citing questions of privacy, a ministry spokesman would not comment on whether any of 21 men arrested by a federal antiterrorism task force in recent weeks had received loans under the program.
The college provided fraudulent letters to foreigners so they could enter and stay in Canada on student visas even though they did not attend classes, immigration hearings have been told.
It was one of many postsecondary schools whose students were eligible for federal assistance. Human Resources Development Canada is responsible for the Canada Student Loans Program.
The provincial Education Ministry administers the federal program for eligible schools in Ontario under an agreement with Ottawa.
The college was eligible for the program for only one year, ministry spokesman Dave Ross said. "Once their registration was revoked, so was their eligibility to offer [the funding] instantly," he said.
The college is a link among many of the individuals swept up in the immigration and terrorism investigation. At least nine of the men told Immigration Department officials they were students at the college. Four said they were enrolled even after there were no classes to attend.
Ottawa Business College ceased operating in June, 2001, and the Ontario government suspended its registration that September after it failed to post a bond with the ministry, Mr. Ross said. All colleges registered with the ministry must post bonds so that student tuition can be refunded in the event of bankruptcy.
The college operated on the second floor of a low-rise office building in the eastern Toronto suburb of Scarborough.
Hearings before the Immigration and Refugee Board were told that Luther Samuel, onetime owner of the school, has admitted that he provided several fraudulent letters attesting that students were attending classes and had paid tuition fees.
Mr. Samuel, described variously as the school's admissions director, president, or chief administrative officer, told an Immigration Department task force and the RCMP that he charged fees ranging from $400 to $500 for false letters indicating an individual had paid tuition, the hearings were told.
Investigators detected about 400 fraudulent entries into Canada through the school.
"In fact, no tuition fees . . . have ever been paid to the college," Edith Ishmael-Decaire, counsel for the department, said at a hearing for one of the men held in custody.
"The persons who purchased the letters never had the intention of attending class, and in fact, even if they had, there were no classes to attend."
The investigation known as Project Thread started as a probe into the legitimacy of the college. It began when an immigration officer at the Canadian Embassy in Mexico investigated a person who had applied to come to Canada to study at the college, only to learn it was no longer operating.
From there, the probe began focusing on questions about whether the men, mostly Pakistanis, were possibly part of an al-Qaeda sleeper cell. They were jailed on the ground that they could pose a risk to Canada's security.
But the terrorist angle began to unravel almost as soon as the detention hearings got under way. The case is shaping up as a massive immigration scam featuring bogus diplomas and fictitious vocational courses.
Most of the detained individuals came to Canada between May and September, 1999, and the last one arrived in September, 2001. Many of them used the college to extend their stay in Canada, the hearings were told.
Yousaf Rasheed, for instance, arrived in Canada in May, 1998, but applied on Aug. 11, 2001, to remain in the country for another three years as a student at Ottawa Business College. Letters from the college seized by investigators say he was enrolled in a computer support program that would be completed in May, 2004, the hearings were told.
Anwar-Ur-Rehman Mohammed, a pharmacist from India who aroused suspicion among investigators for taking what seemed to be an inordinately long time to complete a flight training course, told investigators he learned about the college through a roommate.
He received the go-ahead on Feb. 7, 2002, to study at the school. He had no idea anything was "funny or fishy" about it, his lawyer told a hearing. "Later on, he came to realize that these guys were not on the up and up."
In an apparent reference to Mr. Samuel, Mr. Mohammed testified that a man named Mr. Luther came to his house and handed him an envelope after he paid $1,000 to the college.
When Mr. Mohammed asked what had happened to his money, he testified that "Mr. Luther" told him he couldn't get into the course to which he had applied. He said the man then handed him an envelope, containing a diploma.
"He was so fast and quick like he just gave me that and said 'Have to go now; this is all I can do for you; this is for you,' " he testified.
Mohammad Akhtar, another detained individual, received a permit on Sept. 6, 2001, the same month the ministry revoked the college's registration, to take a computer programming diploma course. Documents from the college seized by investigators indicate Mr. Akhtar paid fees of $1,850. A handwritten note on the file says "will pay $400.00 now."
Mr. Samuel did not return a telephone call yesterday.
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