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University of Johannesburg locks horns with fired professor over withheld pension payout

Details

ujSunday World reports that disgraced former deputy vice-chancellor of finance at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) Jaco van Schoor is still fighting the institution in a bid to lay hands on his pension payout, eight years after he was shown the door after being entangled in a corruption scandal.

Van Schoor, who was fired alongside the institution’s chairperson of council, Roy Marcus, has tried to get the Financial Services Tribunal to force the university to pay his pension bounty. He worked for the institution from 1998 until his dismissal in 2017 after his alleged criminal activities came to the fore. The university withheld his pension benefits pending the civil and criminal litigation it has pursued against Van Schoor, who then complained to the Pensions Fund Adjudicator (PFA). The PFA, while it found Van Schoor’s application to reconsider the university’s decision had been prescribed due to him having launched it more than three years after the fact, still gave him an audience. But, the Financial Services Tribunal found the PFA had bent over backwards to accommodate Van Schoor and set aside its decision to give Van Schoor a lifeline. This was after the university approached the tribunal to set aside the PFA’s decision. The tribunal found: “In seeking to re-interpret the complaint, the PFA drew a distinction which is not supported by a plain reading of the complaint. The complaint raised by the second respondent (van Schoor) clearly concerned the with­holding of his pension benefit…it appears the PFA accepted that the initial decision was time-barred, but the decision to continue to withhold was not.”

  • Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Bongani Mdakane at Sunday World


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