COSTA RICA NEWS – It’s OOPS! time again in Costa Rica, this time it’s the courts being investigated. The Finance Ministry is wondering why the court system paid out more than 4 billion colones in pension to persons who did not by law deserve them.
The pensions were issued under a measure known as Rule IV, which is considered illegal! Some 403 persons received the pension from January, 2000, to July, 2012. The first time that the institution was warned was 2005.
It was the court itself on 2014 that agreed with the Pension Board that the measure was illegal but it merrily continued paying it — illegally. The rule had been interpreted by the Executive Branch that persons retiring from the court at age 55 could receive the equivalent of the last 12 months salary earned.
The court pension system was created in 1987 and currently administers pensions to 3,226 retired employees with 12,055 employees paying into it. But in June of 2012 a private accounting firm predicted that the pension fund would be bankrupt by 2027.
The pension oversight organization proposed closing the fund due to its being unsustainable, having only 4 billion colones in it in 2012. Apparently there were some deaf ears in the court hierarchy. Worse, they did not seem to credit their own ruling!
Article by iNews.co.cr, reposted with permission
