Avianca: Payments to senior executives are part of the retention plan.

This Monday, reported El Espectador, Avianca’s decision to pay US$7.2 million in bonuses to its top executives at the beginning of this year was made public, which awakened a new wave of criticism against the company, which has been in the process of reorganization in the United States since May 10, 2020.

See also: Avianca warns that without a loan from the Colombian Government its operation will be unviable.

According to the Investigative Journalism Agency (API), the media that revealed the information, in the payments declared in the last year before the United States justice, there are multiple bonuses to the heads of the firm. The president, Anko Van Der Werff, is said to have received US$3,732,494, and the financial vice president, Adrian Neuhauser, US$2,783,272.

See also: Colombia: Reactivation of international flights will be 20% in the first phase.

The airline assured, through a statement, that a part of the payments made this year correspond to labor obligations from last year, specifically to a strategy that was developed to seek that the management team of the company did not withdraw in the middle of the crisis. He also specified that this amount was reached “with the results obtained in the process of re-profiling the debt in 2019”, showing that they had the financial capacity to do so.

However, public opinion questioned whether the holding company would resort to the Bankruptcy Law in the United States, insist that its workers accept a reduction in salary and request a million dollar loan from the national government to survive the pandemic when, at the same time, it was allocating such a large sum of money for bonuses.