College cash cut after golden handshake

Thursday 01 October 2009

A vocational training college in Friesland has had its budget slashed by €690,000 after giving its former chairman Klaas Koops a €1.3m pay-off.

Koops, who left the Friesland College in 2007, was paid a one-off sum of €190,000 plus €150,000 a year until 2012 for 'unspecified advisory work'.

But if he had been paid off according to standard rules, the total golden handshake would have been just €650,000, an education ministry investigation found.

Junior education minister Ank van Bijsterveldt has now decided to slash the college budget to compensate for the overpayment. 'Someone in this position should realise we are talking about public money,' Van Bijsterveldt told the Volkskrant. 'I cannot let this €1.3m payment go ahead. It would be the green light for more affairs like this.'

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