STA, 10 April 2019 - The University of Ljubljana has been ordered again to repay EUR 781,000 paid out in unwarranted standby bonuses to employees between 2012 and 2015 after the case was tried again, the national radio reports.
According to Radio Slovenija, the ruling, delivered by the Ljubljana District Court, is not yet final. It comes after the same court already ordered the university to repay the funds in 2017 but the Higher Court ordered a retrial.
The standby bonuses scandal at the University of Ljubljana erupted late in 2015 after an audit found that nine out of eleven colleges inspected paid out a total of EUR 781,000 in standby bonuses unlawfully between 2012 and 2014, allegedly to circumvent austerity measures.
The biggest offender was the Faculty of Economics, which adopted rules on such payments when its dean was Dušan Mramor, who later staunchly advocated austerity as finance minister in the Miro Cerar government. Mramor was also one of the recipients, along Maja Makovec Brenčič, who served as education minister in the Cerar government.
Mramor and his faculty associates are on trial in a separate case.
Unofficial reports alleged that a total of EUR 1.5m had been paid out between 2012 and 2015, but the colleges were not required to return the money they had secured from other sources.
The Education Ministry claimed the EUR 781,000 of its funding back arguing in the trial the money had been paid out ineligibly. The university insisted on its argument that the colleges paid out the bonuses from the funds they earned in commercial projects, rather than from public funds.
The university's lawyer, Dino Bauk, told the STA in March that the proof offered by the university was that the bonus- paying colleges generated more than EUR 86m in the market at the time, part of which was spent on their public activities. The university received EUR 16m less for those activities from the ministry. Bauk said at the time the university would appeal again should it lose the case.
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