The Swiss paradise that opens the door to fraud within the Catalan university

BarcelonaSwitzerland is a world apart. Always. The Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) received a complaint against a researcher who was receiving a María Zambrano grant, which is incompatible with any other funding or resources, because the woman simultaneously held a 42-hour postdoctoral contract at the University of Basel. But the Swiss institution refused to provide any information. "For reasons of personal data protection, they did not want to inform us of the contractual relationship or any details of the researcher's personal situation," was Basel's response to the UAB, echoing the response the Swiss university gave to this newspaper. In other words, Catalan institutions are unable to determine whether their employees are committing alleged fraud.

Faced with the lack of information about the researcher in the UAB's musicology department, the Catalan university closed the internal investigation it had opened following the complaint. "It has been established that the researcher in question carried out the work for which she was hired at the UAB, and no evidence has been obtained, nor are there the means to ascertain the existence of dual, incompatible, and concurrent activity by the researcher at both universities," argues the Catalan university.

The researcher obtained the postdoctoral grant María Zambrano was affiliated with the UAB between May 2022 and July 2024. These grants represent a net income exceeding 2,300 euros. Simultaneously, in July 2023, she obtained a contract with a Swiss university that quadrupled the amount she received in Spain. In both cases, the recipient of these grants is not required to be permanently present at the workplace. According to the UAB, the researcher stated that she had obtained a position in Basel, but that she had requested—and been granted—to start later, in July 2024. Therefore, there would be no overlap of activities.

Overlap

The ARA has been able to prove that she received payments from both institutions for at least a month, and furthermore, she produced articles, publications, and gave talks during this period of alleged overlap, appearing as a researcher from Basel. She also had accommodation in Switzerland. However, the UAB considers that this case would not be "incompatible" with the requirements of the María Zambrano grant. "We understand that the University of Basel is not included in any of the incompatibility scenarios, given that it is neither an entity of a European Union country nor can it be classified as an international organization," argues the Catalan center.

According to the call for applications for the María Zambrano grants published in the BOE (Official State Gazette), the "grant awarded to each of the beneficiaries will be incompatible with any other aid, income, or resources with the same purpose, from any administration or public or private entities, national, from the European Union, or from international organizations." For the UAB, therefore, the University of Basel does not fall under any of these categories.

However, the Department of Research and Universities contradicts the UAB: if the researcher received payment in Switzerland, there was a conflict of interest. Furthermore, sources within the department clarify that the wording of the María Zambrano grants, when referring to international organizations, is intended to include countries like Switzerland. Regarding this, the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities remains silent. On September 2nd, ARA inquired whether a Swiss university qualifies as an international organization, as stated in the Official State Gazette (BOE), and ministry officials have avoided responding for three months, despite repeated inquiries from this newspaper.

Moreover, the UAB itself goes even further in its position to close the investigation into the researcher. "Nor can it be proven that the purpose of the aid received by him is the same as that of the alleged contract with the University of Basel, because we have not been able to obtain more information, nor do we have, as already explained, the means to do so," they argue.

The same UAB (Autonomous University of Barcelona) already encountered the case in 2023 of a professor who had received the María Zambrano grant for eight months while simultaneously holding the position of dean of the Dunarea University of Jos in Romania. According to reports Eldiario.esHe had to pay the 20,000 euros that he was entitled to for the scholarship.