The board of directors of the National Center for Cancer Research (CNIO) today unanimously approved the elimination of three senior officials of the organization linked to the previous phase. This is the deputy directorate of economic affairs, entrusted to Juan Arroyo, secretary general, with Laura Muñoz at the helm, and the deputy director of the directorate, José Ignacio Fernández Vera. These positions will be eliminated as part of a “restructuring” of the CNIO’s leadership, according to sources close to the deal.
The proposal was put forward by the current CEO, José Manuel Bernabé, who has held the position since September and arrived with the aim of reviving the CNIO – the largest cancer research center in Spain – and clarifying whether there were rigged contracts in the organisation.
According to a complaint filed with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office in June, Juan Arroyo, the organization’s CEO for more than 15 years, was involved in granting irregular contracts to friendly companies. The other two people fired were positions very close to him.
The official reason for the dismissals is to eliminate duplications, free up resources to allocate them to the strategic priorities of the center and guarantee the sustainability of the budget, as sources close to the board of directors, the highest governing body of this center with an annual budget of around 40 million euros, explain to EL PAÍS.
In 2017, José Ignacio Fernández Vera resigned as director general of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology for “personal reasons” after this newspaper revealed he had spent almost 25,000 euros over two years renting high-end cars with a private driver to go from Madrid to events in Salamanca, his hometown, and elsewhere in Spain.
The Ministry of Science, Innovation and University had called an emergency meeting of the board of directors, the governing body of this public center, for Tuesday to analyze the situation and make the necessary decisions. Last week, the details of a complaint filed with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office became known, warning of alleged rigged contracts awarded to companies linked to the organisation’s top management, or to former employees.
The complainant, who started working at the CNIO in 2005 and developed a good part of his professional career there, was fired in August together with another director of the center with whom he allegedly analyzed the institution’s accounts and discovered the alleged irregularities. Both former employees alerted two senior officials of the Ministry in March and August – the complaint was filed at the end of June: the Secretary of State Juan Cruz Cigudosa and the general secretary of Research, Eva Ortega Paíno. Sources in the department headed by Diana Morant assure that the board was briefly informed of the dismissals and their context, and that members did not ask for more details; but there are employers who deny having been informed of the complaint.
The president of the council is the general secretary of Research, Eva Ortega Paíno, with the honorary presidency reserved for Diana Morant, who is in Valencia today for the opening of the academic year and to attend the presentation of the Jaume I Awards. The council also includes a vice-president, Marina Pollán, director of the Carlos III Health Institute, four ex-officio members —Javier Padilla, secretary of State for Health, Eloísa del Pino, president of the CSIC, Borja Monreal, from the Cabinet of the Presidency of the Government, and Marta Ortiz, deputy director general of the Carlos III Institute—, representatives of four rotating autonomous communities, in this case the Balearic Islands, Extremadura, Castilla y León and Murcia, all governed by the PP, and three private employers: the Spanish Association against Cancer, the BBVA Foundation and the Cris Against Cancer Foundation. Also participating are Ángela Nieto, representative of the Advisory Council of Science, Technology and Innovation, and the legal representative of the CNIO, who is its new CEO, José Manuel Bernabé.
For more than a year the CNIO has been mired in a deep crisis that it cannot seem to overcome. Created in 1998, the organization is often cited as the largest and best cancer research center in Spain and one of the best in the world. But behind this showcase, the organization has gone through several deep crises since its creation. The penultimate one was characterized by the clash between its scientific director, María Blasco, and its director, Juan Arroyo, to the point that sources at the center speak of a latent internal war that prevented the center from functioning properly.
At least three years ago, the degradation of facilities and the collapse of key research tools, such as confocal microscopes, began to become evident. Of the four the organization had, it only had one operational. Likewise, the animal farm, which housed more than 30,000 laboratory mice, had broken cleaning systems, with the health problems that entails.
Some of its scientists have alerted several times, starting in 2022, both the scientific direction of the organization, led by María Blasco, and the Ministry of Science. The crisis has not been resolved. By the end of 2024, half of the organization’s scientific leaders called for Blasco’s firing. This group was particularly concerned about the decline of the center as a national and international reference.
According to a report prepared by the CNIO leaders for the Ministry of Science, high-quality scientific production has decreased in recent years, as has the organization’s ability to attract high-level researchers. This group believes that part of the explanation for these problems lies in the mismanagement of Blasco, who had been leading the CNIO since 2011 without his replacement having been publicly mentioned. Furthermore, the centre, with an overall budget of around 40 million euros per year, had a deficit of 4.5 million.
María Blasco and the organization’s general director, Juan Arroyo, were unanimously fired by the center’s board on January 29, as reported by this newspaper. In addition to his alleged mismanagement as the center’s scientific director, Blasco had several complaints of workplace harassment weighing on him. The organization has appointed two temporary replacements, director Maribel Salido and scientific director Fernando Peláez.
The previous phase was characterized by the clash between Blasco and Arroyo and their respective supporters. With the new appointments, the situation has not improved, at least at a management level, to the point that the center has fired two managers with disciplinary files for alleged disobedience and for allegedly endangering the integrity of the center and its employees, according to sources close to the process. The two fired executives were veterans of CNIO management and had worked side by side with Arroyo for years without any apparent problems. But after the coach’s fall everything went wrong. One of them claims to have come across a large catalog of hiring irregularities and the existence of a network of friendly companies in which the hires fell.
This former employee reported these facts to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, which admitted the complaint, but has not yet opened a proceeding or contacted any of the parties involved. A key point is whether it is proven that CNIO contract managers took a bite out of these irregular contracts, which the complainant did not detect.
The new permanent dome of the CNIO is semi-enclosed. The new CEO, José Manuel Bernabé, has been in office since September with two responsibilities: relaunching the CNIO and clarifying whether there have been irregularities in hiring.
Raúl Rabadán, a physicist and bioinformatician from Madrid, has been appointed as the new scientific director, but has not yet been able to take up the role because he still has contractual responsibilities with his current employer, Columbia University, in the United States. It is expected that Rabadán will be able to fully begin its task early next year, according to sources in the Ministry of Science.
Yesterday afternoon, during an event in Alicante, journalists asked Diana Morant what the informant’s statements were about EL PAÍS. The Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities said: “If there has been any kind of irregularity at the CNIO or any sum of money that should have been earmarked for cancer treatment has been misappropriated, that has our complete condemnation.” Morant further underlined that one of Barnabas’ tasks is to ascertain “if irregularities have been committed”. “We are not aware of the complaint, but we are available to the justice system to transmit the necessary information to the CNIO”, he added.
