Agents of the National Police presented this month at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas (CNIO), to request documents on the petition of the Anticorruption Fiscal Authority of Madrid, which is investigating an alleged conspiracy of corrupt contracts, denounced by an executive director of the institution, dependent on the Ministry of Science.
A spokesperson for Minister Diana Morant’s office assures that “there was no trace”, as the newspaper claims. The World“ring exclusively for a formal request for information”. The agents, from the Unidad de Delincuencia Económica y Fiscal (UDEF), took this documentation on a hard drive, but “in no case did they take computers or any other device,” assures the spokesperson. Police sources confirm that there was no recording, but only a request for documents.
The CNIO is the largest cancer research organization in Spain. An executive, fired for a disciplinary matter in August, denounced the fact that the center’s administrator, Juan Arroyo, and other employees created an alleged network of contractual contracts, squandered and awarded to friendly companies. According to the calculations of the dismissed executive, it was possible to withdraw around 20 million euros from the CNIO’s public coffers in a decade.
Arroyo served as the organization’s executive director for more than 15 years. He reports an alert from a “group of employers” concerning service and personal contracts at the CNIO. From 2007, according to the complainant, a group of “satellite companies” appeared with the aim of “resulting in the award of all contracts” for outsourced activities. The information transmitted to Anticorruption is the example of Gedosol, founded by the former personnel manager of the CNIO and which would benefit from more than 15 million contracts, again following the complaint.
Another notable company, Zeus SL, created by the former technical director of the center and which would have billed 5.4 million euros. Alaos ITL SL, linked to the organization’s former purchasing director, earned 11 million euros, according to the complainant. The network companies remained the only customers of the CNIO and would have won practically all the offers presented, according to the text of the complaint, delayed on November 16 by The World y confirmed by EL PAÍS.
The Ministry of Science has assumed this time of “its absolute collaboration with justice and its maximum determination with any type of irregularities which may have occurred at the CNIO”, according to its spokesperson. The center has an annual budget of around 40 million euros, the majority of which is financed by the ministry.
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