Secret financing of the chair is possible due to the mistakes of the University of Amsterdam

• Siebe Sietsma

  Research intro

• Yuri Vogts

  News editor

Mistakes piled on funding errors of special appointment professor Hein Vermeulen at the University of Amsterdam. Due to the hidden construction, the professor’s real moneylender has been kept out of sight for years. This is evident from the research conducted by the university. Vermeulen took over last year the classroom Once news hour open He was secretly paid by an interest group of real estate investors.

When Vermeulen became a professor by private appointment at the University of Amsterdam in 2012, the university was short of cash. This is why he arranges for himself a lender, interest group of real estate investors. However, he is not paid directly, but through a training institute, the Amsterdam School of Real Estate.

This creates the impression that Vermeulen’s endowed chair is being paid for by a training institute, while his real sponsor is an interest group of real estate entrepreneurs. This runs counter to academic norms: professors should be transparent about their interests and funders to prevent covert influence.

Research by Berenschot’s office now shows that the professor is not working alone. His manager at the time, department head Rob Cornelis, was also aware of the construction. It is not clear from the investigation to what extent Cornelis later discussed the construction with the university administration.

When the professorship awarded to Vermeulen changes to an appointment as a full professor in 2016, payments by the interest group VBFV will continue for another two years. It comes to €40,000 a year, of which the UvA was not aware. “it’s not
It is known how many days per week the professor actually held the position, ”the researchers say. Vermeulen also received a salary from the UvA itself.

Vermeulen has also not mentioned VBFV care in scientific publications. However, an outside panel concluded that the publications were not “contrary to the principles and standards of scientific integrity.”

Vermeulen and Cornelis initially denied the existence of a secret financier towards the university. They now admit to the Bernchott researchers that this is indeed the case.

The current Dean of the Faculty of Law, André Nollkemper, calls Conclusions about “serious” covert financing. “The fact that the chair holder did not provide the necessary transparency about the financial structure and did not report the continued disbursement of external funding after the end of the tenure of the awarded professorship is unacceptable. The process surrounding the institution and supervision of this chair from 2011 to 2016 is below. The previous department chair was indecisive sufficiently in the exercise of his administrative responsibility.

The university does not want to say whether former department chair Rob Cornelis can stay at the university, where he remains a professor. The university believes that this is a matter between the employee and the employer. Cornelis says he doesn’t want to answer that news hour. Vermeulen did not respond to a request for comment.