Back in January 2010 Harold Raveche resigned from the presidency of New Jersey’s Stevens Institute of Technology after law enforcement officials began an investigation into financial mismanagement at the school.
This happened after investigators discovered, according to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, that the Stevens board “had overpaid Mr. Raveche, who made more than $1.1-million in 2007-8 and was the beneficiary of more than $1.2-million in low-interest loans from the college.“
It turns out that, while Raveche may have been forced to resign in disgrace, he’s not exactly suffering as a result of that financial mismanagement allegation. According to an article by Kelly Heyboer in The Star-Ledger:
Stevens Institute of Technology’s former president has received more than $5 million from the university since he left in 2010 amid allegations of financial mismanagement at the school, campus officials said Wednesday.
The payout to Harold Raveche — which came shortly after Stevens made a deal with the state to settle a lawsuit over the Hoboken school’s financial and governance problems — included consulting fees, severance pay, retirement benefits and other cash.
Stevens was legally obliged to pay Raveche the money, said Randy Greene, the university’s chief financial officer.
Well perhaps the school was obliged to pay Raveche most of the money, but some of this seems a little questionable.
Raveche enjoyed a supplemental retirement benefit which was, apparently on the advice of the school’s lawyers, paid out when he retired. He also picked up another $320,000 in severance payments in 2011 and, oddly enough, got another $500,608 in “consulting fees” from the school in 2011 and 2012.
Back when Raveche resigned in 2010 the Stevens community suggested that the lengthy tenure of the chairman of the school’s board allowed him to become too close to the president he was supposed to oversee.
