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Three researchers from the University of Maryland at College Park who received federal research funding failed to disclose that their projects were also getting support from foreign companies, in violation of the False Claims Act, the U.S. Department of Justice alleged in a news release Tuesday.
While no liability has been determined, UMD has agreed to pay the federal government $500,000 to resolve the allegations.
“Complete and accurate disclosures are essential to federal agencies that make decisions on awarding federal grants,” Erek L. Barron, U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland, said in the release. “Those individuals and universities that knowingly fail to do so skew the grant awarding process in their favor and will be held accountable.”
The allegations came to light after the National Science Foundation Office of Inspector General led a proactive investigation to determine if higher ed institutions receiving foreign gifts and contracts valued at $250,000 or more a year were disclosing such gifts in federal grant proposals, as required by the Higher Education Act of 1965.
Between 2015 and 2020, the Justice Department alleged, the UMD researchers who received grant funding from the NSF and the Department of the Army also got research support from Chinese companies, including Alibaba.
“As this case demonstrated, the failure of institutional oversight can foster noncompliance and present significant challenges to the integrity of the federal research funding process,” NSF inspector general Allison Lerner said in the news release.
