Riël Franzsen

Marius van Oordt

Sansia Blackmore

Extraordinary Academic Staff

Odd-Helge Fjeldstad

Cecil Morden

Dr Bernd Schlenther is an independent expert who assists governments in improving domestic resource mobilization (DRM) and in addressing illicit financial flows (IFFs). He has extensive operational and management experience at the South African Revenue Service (SARS) in diverse fields including taxation, customs, enforcement, compliance, anti-money laundering, risk management and intelligence. He also has experience in outreach and capacity building initiatives that deal with regional and global topical issues. Bernd works as an external expert in Africa and Asia for various international institutions including the African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Customs Organization (WCO). He holds a PhD in Tax Policy from the African Tax Institute (ATI) of the University of Pretoria and has published several journal articles and book chapters on the impact of corruption and money laundering on tax, the value of inter-agency cooperation and good governance to combat IFFs and the linkage between COVID-19 and IFFs.

Prof Eric M. Zolt is the Michael H. Schill Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus at the UCLA School of Law. He specializes in individual, corporate, and international tax law. Working with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, US AID and the US Treasury Department, Eric has served as a consultant on tax policy matters in over 30 countries. Before coming to UCLA, he was a partner at Kirkland & Ellis. Eric served in the US Department of Treasury, first as Deputy Tax Legislative Counsel and then as founder and director of Treasury’s Tax Advisory Program in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. Eric also served as the Faculty Director of the International Tax Program at Harvard Law School. He is a co-founder of the African Tax Institute.

Associated Staff

Dirk Scholtz

Teresa Pidduck

Fanie van Zyl

Prof Fanie van Zyl is a Professor in the Department of Mercantile Law. He holds the degrees LLB, LLM (UP), LLD (UNISA), as well as a Diploma in Insolvency Law and Practice (AIPSA/UP). The title of his doctoral thesis is “The Collection of Value Added Tax on online Cross-Border Trade in Digital Goods” (2013). He is also an NRF-rated researcher. He is a visiting professor at the Gujarat National Law University, India. He served as an advisor for the Davis Tax Committee. He is a member of the African Tax Administration Forum VAT Technical Committee and he serves on the Scientific Committee of the African Tax Research Network. He is the holder of the 2018 International Association of Law Schools Visiting Professor Scholarship.

Mzwandile Ngidi

André Lourens 

André Lourens holds BSocSci Politics, Philosophy & Economics, BComHon. Economics and MCom Economics degrees from the University of Pretoria. His research focuses predominantly on developing-countries and his work cuts across the fields of political economics, institutional economics and also economic history, public economics and anthropology — given the context-specificity of the development dynamics in sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, his research strongly emphasises state-society relations and (un)democratic institutions, and strongly incorporates quantitative/econometric measures making it uniquely interdisciplinary. He is currently enrolled for a PhD in Tax Policy at the ATI.

Email: [email protected]  

Former Extraordinary Appointees

Roy Bahl 

Extraordinary Professor
Prof Roy Bahl was Regents Professor of Economics and Founding Dean at The Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta Georgia, US.  Formerly, he was The Maxwell Professor of Political Economy at Syracuse University, and before that was with the Fiscal Affairs Department at the International Monetary Fund, and on the faculty at West Virginia University. He has long worked on questions of tax and expenditure policy, and on intergovernmental fiscal policy.  He has advised many developing and middle income countries, and frequently consults with international agencies and private businesses.  He has served on several editorial boards for journals, and is the author and coauthor of numerous books and scholarly papers, including most recently, Reforming the Public finance System to Fit a more Urbanized China (2014), and Financing Metropolitan Governments in Developing Countries (2013).  He serves on the board of directors of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a director of the International Center for Land Policy Training and Research in Taiwan.  He is the recipient of several awards, including The Dan Holland Medal of the National Tax Association, and The Aaron Wildavsky award of the American Society of Public Administration.  His former students are working in universities, international agencies and governments all over the world.
He is a graduate of Greenville College, and of the University of Kentucky. 

Sijbren Cnossen

Extraordinary Professor
Prof Sijbren Cnossen has been associated with the ATI and its predecessor – the Southern African Tax Institute – since 2002. He has been an extraordinary professor since 2009. Apart from his collaboration with the ATI, he is an academic partner at the CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (since 2006) and a senior advisor to the International Tax and Investment Center (since 2001). Formerly he was Professor of Tax Law in the Economics Faculty at Erasmus University (The Netherlands) from 1977-2001 and Dean of the Economics Faculty from 1984-1987. He is also a former Professor of Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Maastricht from 1999-2007. He has also acted as an Alternate Judge in the Dutch Tax Court from 1984-2006. He has lectured at universities, ministries of finance, and research institutes in Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States (Harvard University, New York University and University of Florida), and various other countries. He has also acted as a Consultant to the IMF, OECD, World Bank, European Commission, US-AID, HIID, GTZ, and various foreign tax committees. He has advised some 30 countries on the design of their tax systems, including China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Poland, the Russian Federation, and South Africa.
Lastly, he is a Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion, an honour bestowed on him by the Dutch Government in 2016.

Tomas Balco

Extraordinary Lecturer
Dr Tomas Balco is a tax professional with over 15 years experience in the private and public sectors. He has experience working as a consultant for multinational companies, different tax administration, the OECD, the United Nations and the European Commission. He is currently the Head of the Transfer Pricing Unit in the Centre for Tax Policy and Administration at the OECD. Dr Balco hols a PhD from Masaryk University in Czech Republic.

David Solomon

Extraordinary Lecturer
David Solomon has been involved in research, education and training and policy development in the area of Urban Economics and Local Government Finance since 1980. He served for 20 years at The University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, as a lecturer, senior lecturer and professor, teaching, researching and developing new courses in the areas of Urban Economics, Local Public Finance, Property Economics, and Finance. From 2002 – 2004 he served as Head of School of Economic and Business Sciences.
He has been active as an international consultant in the area of Local Government Finance, and has participated in several major projects both in South Africa and abroad, and has made inputs into the legislative process, and into national policy formulation. He is currently working on financial management reform in Somalia both at state and national level, and a review of property tax initiatives in Somaliland and Somalia (UN-Habitat). He has written and published numerous papers, and chapters in books on topics including land taxes, decentralisation, federalism, anti-corruption, and local government.