the bulk of what's going to be discussed below is a summation of this dossier written from myself. it's a long document that has more meat that this post. this account is a throwaway since i'm worried about retribution.
to summarize the dossier (though i would implore most to read it)
the university of waterloo gave an honorary doctorate to calvin choi in june 2021, someone who was banned from the hong kong finance industry for 2 years in 2022, and, months prior to him receiving the doctorate, had his offices raided by regulatory authorities and was accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from one of china's bigger investment groups.
these accusations were so mainstream in 2020, that literal banners accusing choi of fraud were hung all over hong kong
the reason choi was able to receive this honour was from a relationship cultivated with waterloo and president feridun hamdullahpur that lasted over years. feridun had joined the board of AMTD in 2019, and waterloo had engaged in the following...
- in april to june 2019, received a $3.25m donation from calvin choi to eventually set up a post-doc program between the two schools. feridun had not adequately disclosed this conflict of interest to the board of governors, which is required from waterloo's section J for board of governor's bylaws.
- donna strickland, nobel laureate for physics, was appointed to AMTD's in 2019, despite the advisory board primarily being made up of finance heavyweights.
- in 2021, the honorary doctorate was given to calvin choi, where feridun would've held held roles as the chair of the honorary degree committee and senate. no conflict of interest disclosure was adequately noted in the minutes and it's not clear if feridun recused himself within the selection process for choi, especially considering that previously mentioned allegations against him were very much google-able.
the dossier does a much more in-depth look than this, but i bring this all up because of the history that AMTD has had since calvin choi had received his doctorate. AMTD is currently being probed by regulatory agencies regarding practices in Hong Kong after their subsidiary's stock mysteriously hit a valuation of $450 billion on the new york stock market before mysteriously crashing after.
despite this and the aforementioned ban and allegations of fraud, waterloo officials continue to be associated with calvin choi and AMTD as of just this last year
i've written all this up as a compilation of publicly available data to bring to light how school officials are potentially laundering the reputation and prestige of the school to an operator with allegedly malicious intentions. this isn't someone who i would believe students and alum would feel comfortable having their school associate with.
in good faith, i've assembled a couple of questions that i feel would be right for the school to answer for what's discussed in the dossier.
i hope that the school is adequately able to answer for the occurrences presented here, and that protocol was adequately followed.
Feridun is on the board of a diploma mill college (IBU) in Toronto so this is unsurprising, but I don't think he is still involved at UW. the other person in your photo doesn't seem to still be involved either unless i am misreading
Well researched, hope the university responds to the questions in your open letter
Feridun was shady as fuck. He's probably still getting some money from this institution