Anti-corruption opens an investigation on the CNIO after a corruption criticism | Science | EUROtoday

The accounts of the biggest most cancers analysis heart in Spain will likely be investigated by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, in response to tax sources. The company will open investigations into alleged irregularities in hiring on the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO), as introduced Abc and EL PAÍS has confirmed.

The former supervisor of the group, Juan Arroyo, and different workers are accused of getting directed an alleged scheme of rigged, inflated contracts awarded to pleasant firms, in response to a criticism filed by a former CNIO director who has been fired. According to the calculations of this former govt, round 20 million euros might have been stolen from the CNIO’s public coffers in a decade.

This Tuesday, the CNIO board unanimously agreed to remove the positions of the present former supervisor and two different govt positions near him on the proposal of the group’s new supervisor, José Manuel Bernabé, as EL PAÍS reported. The new particular person accountable for the accounts of this public heart, with a funds of about 40 million euros per yr, additionally introduced a report back to the Prosecutor’s Office on November 18 together with his personal evaluation of the accounts.

The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office has reviewed the data within the complaints and appreciates that the information are of “particular importance” to provoke investigation proceedings presumably for the crimes of embezzlement, affect peddling and prevarication, though this level will emerge in the course of the investigation.

According to the criticism filed with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office in June by the previous CNIO employee, to which this newspaper has had entry, Juan Arroyo, who was managing director of the group for greater than 15 years, was allegedly concerned in granting irregular contracts to pleasant firms. The different two individuals fired have been positions very near him.

The criticism warns of “a set of patterns” within the hiring of companies and personnel on the CNIO. Since 2007, a gaggle of “satellite companies” has emerged with the obvious aim of “being awarded all contracts” for outsourced actions. An instance is Gedosol, based by the previous chief of employees of the CNIO, which took greater than 15 million in contracts, in response to the criticism. Zeus SL, created by the middle’s former technical director, would have invoiced 5.4 million euros. Alaos ITL SL, linked to the group’s former buying director, had a turnover of 11 million euros. And there may be additionally Navestalia, which manages an industrial warehouse in San Agustín de Guadalix, close to Madrid, allegedly linked to the previous managing director. The firms within the community had the CNIO as their solely consumer and supposedly received virtually all of the tenders they entered into, in response to the textual content of the lawsuit.

The solely one in all these firms that has responded to this newspaper’s questions is Alaos, which denies the accusations.

According to the story given to the Prosecutor’s Office, in some instances these firms have been accountable for hiring personnel to offer companies that the CNIO beforehand supplied, corresponding to secretariat for analysis teams. This allowed it to proceed hiring employees regardless of the restrictions that the middle has suffered in the course of the years of the disaster. On different events, firms acquired tens of 1000’s of euros for work by no means completed, all the time in response to the criticism, which is 120 pages lengthy.

The whistleblower’s evaluation factors to alleged chained contracts for 49,900 euros or 14,900 euros, just under the boundaries that assure better management, as supplied by the Science Law and the middle’s inner contracting information, respectively. One of those contracts, near 50,000 euros, was to offer masks. When they arrived, they needed to be discarded as a result of they have been virtually unimaginable to placed on because of the shortness of the rubber bands, says the complainant. According to their evaluation, there are indications of fractionation amounting to a couple of million euros between 2018 and 2024.