RIYADH: There has been a flurry of activity on Twitter about an Egyptian expatriate allegedly trying to present himself as a qualified civil engineer, after apparently previously being found to have bogus qualifications.

However, the man at the center of the storm has denied that he has been involved in any fraud. He claimed that he had not recently created a profile on Twitter advertising himself as an engineer working for the Riyadh metro project, and that this was done by someone trying to discredit him.

The man said: “I now work for a pest control company and left engineering a long time ago because I had some issues with government projects.” He plans to take legal action against those who had set up the account on Twitter, according to the report.

Last year, the Saudi Council of Engineers’ (SCE) previous head, Hamad Al-Shaqawi, issued a statement saying that a man with the same name did not have an engineering qualification as claimed from Al-Mansoura University in 1989. Officials from the Riyadh metro also denied that he was working for them.

Twitter users published a letter from the university showing that the man was not a graduate because it did not have an engineering faculty in 1989. The first students only graduated in 1996.

Abdulnasir Al-Abdulatif, spokesman of the SCE, said the man was not registered as an engineer and did not work in any engineering-related field.

The SCE has discovered more than 30,000 expatriates with fake engineering qualifications in the Kingdom. The SCE revealed that 15,000 people had approached the organization, admitted they had falsified their qualifications, and sought to amend their professions.