ACCA exams up for sale

ACCA has cracked down on students taking pictures of exam questions at their exam desks, and then trying to sell them online.

Taobao Marketplace, a Chinese shopping website, was the common portal for this, but there was one problem – students’ ACCA registration numbers and the exam centre were at the top of the screens, making it easy for the association to identify the guilty parties!

In one case ACCA China received an email raising concerns about the integrity of the CBEs after F4 questions were found on the internet. This ‘person’ later provided ACCA with a web link and sample photographs of exam questions. A local ACCA contact then made a test purchase on Taobao Marketplace.

After the payment went through the questions were made available on Baiduyn, a cloud storage service. Four students have now been found guilty of misconduct.

Failure to respond to ACCA correspondence added to the punishment, as this is a big no-no.

The disciplinary committee judgements were:

• F4 student Chen Yiyun was removed from the student register and ordered to pay costs of £7,000.

• F4 student Hiujiao Ru was removed from the student register and ordered to pay costs of £6,500.

• F3 student Zehui Gong was also removed from the student register and ordered to pay costs of £5,000.

• F4 student Ziying Wang was severely reprimanded and ordered to pay costs of £3,500.