Board of Directors claimed less expenses in 2016
The five members of the Board of Directors claimed a total of 39.075 euros in expenses in the first six months of 2016 according to receipts published by the UvA last week.
The UvA published receipts totalling 34.930 euros for transportation and accommodation within the Netherlands in the first six months of 2016. This is in comparison to a total amount of 98.000 euros spent on the same for both semesters in 2015. Of the 2016 amount, almost 100% of transportation costs were incurred by the driver services company for the board.
When given the chance to review the expense receipts, Folia found that the total of the monthly invoices sent by the driver services was in fact 44.482,89 euros, 5.407,89 more than the published figure of total claimed costs.
When asked to clarify the disparity, a UvA spokesperson said that the secretaries of the board, Calluna Euving and Geke van Velzen, had also used the service. Extra costs charged to the board by the driver services for coordination were also not taken into account in the published total, the spokesperson said. Although it has been a practice of the UvA and HvA to include these costs in the figure of total costs.
RTL News
The practice of publishing expenses came about after television news network RTL published the results of an inquiry based on the Dutch Freedom of Information Act (wob) in which it requested all Dutch public universities release data on money spent.
When the UvA finally published its expenses, it revealed such instances where, for example, former rector magnificus Dymph van den Boom bought a nine thousand euro flight to Brazil for a working visit, and a board member was offered a course at Harvard Business School as a present. The academic community reacted in outrage.
Busy
The Minister for Higher Education then announced an investigation into the invoicing practices of the university’s board members, calling for them to invoice only ‘necessary’ costs. The Board of Directors of the UvA and HvA announced they would publish its expenses every six months, in the months of May and November.
Sober
Shortly after the RTL revelations, the board started to declare considerably less than before. In 2015 a total amount of 109.576 euros had been declared, while in 2013 and 2014 it had been about two hundred thousand euros. In the second half of 2015 small expenses such as sandwiches and coffee were no longer being declared. This sense of restraint continued into the first half of 2016.
The period also saw a significant decrease in expenditure for trips abroad: 708 euros compared to 2.761 euro in the two semesters of 2015.
