Anti-corruption authorities are investigating an alleged multi-million dollar fraud by former officials of the state cancer center.

A former senior executive at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) has filed a complaint with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office alleging the theft of approximately €20 million in public contracts from the institution that leads the fight against cancer in Spain and holds one of the most prestigious scientific accreditations, that of the Centre for Excellence. The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office is currently reviewing the complaint and has not yet opened an investigation, according to the newspaper. The World And sources from the public prosecutor's office confirmed this to EFE on Monday.

At the beginning of the year The center's board of trustees has already dismissed the scientific director, María Blasco, and the managing director, Juan Arroyo. to "begin a new chapter" after a controversy erupted over the deficit and mismanagement of the Madrid-based organization and an open conflict between Blasco and Arroyo. In June, a former CNIO executive filed a 120-page complaint alleging that companies owned by former officials of the institution profited from contracts that were split, inflated, or where no actual service was provided, with Arroyo's protection. In the document, the complainant, a former CNIO Director of Purchasing and Operations, describes an alleged "torrent of petty corruption" that, according to his calculations, resulted in "between 20 and 25 million euros stolen from the fight against cancer." This would involve a "gigantic operation involving contracts—primarily administrative, logistical, and IT—that are suddenly discovered to have been rigged, split, inflated (sometimes by up to 400%), or simply offered without any service or with zero added value," the whistleblower claims. According to the complaint, this practice continued for 18 years.

Dismissals at the beginning of the year

At the end of January of that year, Blasco was dismissed after twenty years at the CNIO as a researcher and, later, as scientific director. When she was fired, she filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor's Office alleging "possible irregularities" in the center's contracting practices, which were overseen by Arroyo. In her opinion, a series of minor contracts had been awarded to the same group of companies, totaling around four million euros. Blasco left after several complaints of mismanagement and workplace harassment. Specifically, two internal reports concluded that the CNIO's infrastructure was obsolete and that its scientific leadership was declining, meaning that the production of high-quality studies had decreased "significantly." Several researchers at the center also accused Blasco of harassment, abuse of power, and mistreatment, among other problems, and half of the CNIO's chief scientists had demanded his dismissal from the Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities, Diana Morant, for "a lack of institutional vision."