Moderna University was a Portuguese

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

 private university

Private university

Private universities are universities not operated by governments, although many receive public subsidies, especially in the form of tax breaks and public student loans and grants. Depending on their location, private universities may be subject to government regulation. Private universities are...

 headquartered in Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...

, with departments in Setúbal

Setúbal

Setúbal is the main city in Setúbal Municipality in Portugal with a total area of 172.0 km² and a total population of 118,696 inhabitants in the municipality. The city proper has 89,303 inhabitants....

, Porto

Porto

Porto , also known as Oporto in English, is the second largest city in Portugal and one of the major urban areas in the Iberian Peninsula. Its administrative limits include a population of 237,559 inhabitants distributed within 15 civil parishes...

 and Beja

Beja (Portugal)

Beja is a city in the Beja Municipality in the Alentejo region, Portugal. The municipality has a total area of 1,147.1 km² and a total population of 34,970 inhabitants. The city proper has a population of 21,658....

. The institution was authorized by the Portuguese Ministry of Education to provide university higher education services in 1994 (Decree law: DL 313/94 de 23 de Setembro). It was shut down by the Portuguese Ministry for Science, Technology and Higher Education in 30 July 2008.

Moderna affair

The Moderna Affair (Caso Moderna) was a large fraud in Moderna University, which led to a criminal investigation that started in March 1999. It resulted in 13 indictment

Indictment

An indictment , in the common-law legal system, is a formal accusation that a person has committed a crime. In jurisdictions that maintain the concept of felonies, the serious criminal offence is a felony; jurisdictions that lack the concept of felonies often use that of an indictable offence—an...

s for a total of 183 crime

Crime

Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...

s, issued by the public prosecutor. In the final sentence in November 2003, José Braga Gonçalves (12 years, later in June 2004 reduced to 7 years and 6 months) and Pedro Garcia Rosado (3 years, later in June 2004 reduced to 2 years), were the only conviction

Conviction

In law, a conviction is the verdict that results when a court of law finds a defendant guilty of a crime.The opposite of a conviction is an acquittal . In Scotland and in the Netherlands, there can also be a verdict of "not proven", which counts as an acquittal...

s. José Braga Gonçalves, administrator at the university, was son of José Júlio Gonçalves who was the former rector

Rector

The word rector has a number of different meanings; it is widely used to refer to an academic, religious or political administrator...

 of the university and also an administrator. Pedro Garcia Rosado served at the Portuguese Ministry of Education as an assessor

Assessor

An assessor may be:* Assessor , the assistant to a judge or magistrate* Assessor , a senior officer of the University of Oxford* Assessor , an expert who calculates the value of property...

.

2007 investigations

In 2007, the university was on the brink of being closed by the Portuguese ministry responsible for higher education in Portugal, after reports of several irregularities arise during a state-managed investigation on private higher education in the country. It was closed in the summer of 2008.