The Office of the Solicitor General gave a directive on the pension calculation of former Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama.<\/p>\n
The Principal Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet highlighted this while giving evidence in Bainimarama\u2019s pension hearing during a special court sitting today before Suva High Court Judge Justice Daniel Goundar.<\/p>\n
She says that when Bainimarama requested his pension with gratuity, they sought a general review from the Solicitor General\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
She further explained that the advice included that the pension calculation should be based on the salary received for each respective year.<\/p>\n
The Principal Assistant Secretary says the determination to reduce the salaries of the Prime Minister, Ministers and Assistant Ministers by 20 percent was still in effect when Bainimarama retired.<\/p>\n
She further says that there was no directive from the Secretary General to Parliament to reinstate the pay.<\/p>\n
During cross-examination by Devanesh Sharma, she agreed that the determination had an expiry date, from March 27th, 2020 to December 31st, 2020.<\/p>\n
The Head of Corporate Services in the Office of the Prime Minister also testified that following the legal opinion from the Solicitor General\u2019s Office, the calculation process began.<\/p>\n
He confirms that the 75 percent pension cap applied from 2007 to 2017.<\/p>\n
During cross-examination, he admitted that there was confusion regarding the calculation, as the pension should have been calculated based on the retirement salary.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Principal Accounts Officer for the Ministry of Finance says that in 2021, a budget announcement was made to continue with the 20 percent pay cut.<\/p>\n
She explained that the former Prime Minister was receiving his salary under two different payroll systems, and confirmed that before 2012, Bainimarama was paid under the RFMF roll.<\/p>\n
Justice Goundar questioned under which position Bainimarama was being paid, as this could affect the pension calculation.<\/p>\n
State Counsel, Ofa Solimailangi asked if any instruction was given to reinstate the pay, the Principal Accounts Officer added that after the budget announcement, no further instruction was given.<\/p>\n
During cross-examination, she confirmed that the suspension of pay is a temporary measure, and if there had been no budget announcement, they would have proceeded with the determination of suspension.<\/p>\n
Bainimarama earlier told Court that his pension should have been calculated based on his full salary, not the 20 percent reduced rate implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
Bainimarama has sued the government for miscalculating his pension and gratuity entitlements.<\/p>\n
He claims that his pension should have been $246,562.50 annually, but was instead reduced to $184,921.87.<\/p>\n
He also alleges that the gratuity payment was reduced and should have been $770,507.87, but he was paid $433,296.75.<\/p>\n
The former Prime Minister is seeking the remaining gratuity balance with a 13.5 percent annual interest.<\/p>\n
Justice Goundar has given 21 days to the State and defence to submit their closing arguments.<\/p>\n
The judgement will be given on notice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Office of the Solicitor General gave a directive on the pension calculation of former Prime Minister Voreqe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[64,63,56576,99,3739,186,44,184,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-72340","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-bainimarama","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-fiji","13":"tag-finance","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-personal-finance","16":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}