Parent allegedly bribes sports coach to send son to Harvard
Washington, Apr 5 (Xinhua/UNI) Harvard University on Thursday said it is looking into an allegation that one of its students was enrolled after his father bought the house which belonged to the school's fencing coach at a higher-than-market price.
Harvard said in a statement that it came to learn of the case after local media broke the news, and is "now undertaking an independent review of the matter."
According to the allegations, Zhao Jie, a wealthy businessman from the Montgomery County, Maryland, paid nearly a million US dollars for a house owned by Peter Brand, Harvard's fencing coach, when the house was only valued at 549,300 dollars.
After Zhao made the purchase in May 2016, his son was accepted into Harvard University and became a member of its fencing team.
Zhao sold the house 17 months later for 665,000 dollars. He never lived in the house, according to the Boston Globe.
Zhao resigned from the Maryland Governor's Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs after the allegations surfaced.
The allegation came after the Department of Justice in recent weeks bust an illegal operation that funneled bribes from wealthy parents to school sports coaches or supervisors of standardized tests to ensure that their children enter prestigious universities.
The high-profile case, which involved Hollywood stars and top-tier universities such as Yale and Georgetown, brought the enrollment process of elite US universities under scrutiny.
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