06 March 2024 at 22:33
The supervisory board of the LUMC will take measures against two employees and a former employee of the Leiden hospital for subsidy fraud. The case has no consequences for the current top of the LUMC.
Report that Follow the Money in Broadcasting West. There had been signals for some time about abuses surrounding subsidies at the academic hospital. The case came to light when a PhD student became a whistleblower. Because she refused to cover up the fraud, she lost her job.
One of the employees against whom the supervisory board will take measures is Ferry Ossendorp. He is a professor and former whistleblower promoter.
Jacques van den Broek of the supervisory board of the LUMC says on Wednesday that “appropriate measures” will be taken against Ossendorp, reports Broadcasting West. It should become clear within a few weeks what measures will be taken.
Vice-chairman of the supervisory board previously resigned
It is not known who the other employee and the former employee are. It also remains unclear what their share in the subsidy fraud was. However, the supervisory board is taking separate measures against them, Van den Broek reports.
Last week, Pancras Hogendoorn, the vice-chairman of the LUMC supervisory board, resigned. He had already stopped working last November because he could have known about the subsidy fraud, but had not intervened.
The whistleblower says he finds it strange that the LUMC has not taken immediate action against Ossendorp. “The dean (Hogendoorn, ed.) had to leave because he missed a signal about the fraud, Ossendorp had known what was going on for years,” says the former PhD candidate.
Hired company committed fraud with European subsidies
At the end of 2021, the whistleblower had pointed out to Hogendoorn that there were risks associated with working with a company that the hospital had hired, revealed Follow the Money in Broadcaster West last November.
This concerns Percuros, a subsidy agency that LUMC used when applying for large international research projects. Investigation revealed that Percuros “consciously commits fraud to achieve personal financial gain”.
The whistleblower sounded the alarm in the spring of 2022. She was then fired as a PhD candidate because she worked at the LUMC, but on paper was employed by a Scandinavian company.
Such a construction generates extra research money through subsidies, but is contrary to the rules. Yet the hospital did not inform the subsidy provider European Research Executive Agency.
The LUMC’s lawyer acknowledged on Monday during an internal information meeting that the hospital has made mistakes.
You must log in to ask a question. Log in or create your free account within 1 minute.
Log in immediately
Create a free account
2024-03-06 21:33:30
#LUMC #takes #measures #employees #due #subsidy #fraud #Economy
