Dateline: Helsinki, or a broom cupboard in Tikkurila. Your correspondent, Biff Thistlethwaite, found himself nursing a cup of the local dishwater coffee (reported to be 86% gravel, 14% regret) after receiving a tip-off that would make a mackerel blush. The scam: a 'university' called Insinööritaidon Yliopisto (Translation: University of Engineering Skill, but more accurately 'University of Total Bollocks') had been selling dreams to refugees.
For a mere €15,000, war-weary Syrians, Afghans, and Iraqis were promised a place in a Finnish paradise. The reality? A dusty flat in a suburb of Vantaa, a 'degree' in 'Entrepreneurial Studies' (i.
e., a pamphlet on selling used mobile phones), and a welcome letter from the local grocery store that read: 'We don't take your currency.' The mastermind?
One Jukka-Pekka Virtanen, a man with the moral fibre of a mouldy rye bread. When I confronted him at his 'campus' (a glorified shipping container), he smoothly replied, 'It is the Finnish way. We are efficient.
' Efficient at what, sir? Efficient at fleecing the desperate? The tragedy is not just the money.
It is the hope. These people fled bombs to find a new one: a bureaucratic time-bomb of dashed expectations. Meanwhile, the Finnish government yawns, files it under 'cultural misunderstanding,' and goes back to sauna.
As for me, I filed my expenses for a round of 'investigative reindeer jerky' and a bottle of Koskenkorva. Someone has to drink for truth.
