The board of trustees of the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) today unanimously agreed to the elimination of three senior officials of the organization linked to the previous stage. This is the vice directorate of economic affairs, held by Juan Arroyo, the general secretary, with Laura Muñoz at the helm, and the deputy to management, . These positions will be eliminated as part of a “restructuring” of the CNIO leadership, according to sources familiar with the agreement.
The proposal has been raised by the current managing director, José Manuel Bernabé, who has held his position since September and had arrived with the objectives of reviving the CNIO – the largest cancer research center in Spain – and clarifying whether there were rigged contracts in the organization.
According to a complaint filed with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office in June, Juan Arroyo, who was managing director of the organization for more than 15 years, was allegedly involved in targeting friendly companies. The other two people fired were positions very close to him.
The official reason for the dismissals is to eliminate duplication, free up resources to allocate them to the center’s strategic priorities, and guarantee budgetary sustainability, as sources close to the board of trustees, the highest governing body of this center with an annual budget of about 40 million euros, explain to EL PAÍS.
In 2017, José Ignacio Fernández Vera resigned as general director of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology for “personal reasons” after this newspaper revealed that in two years he would rent high-end cars with a private driver to go from Madrid to events in Salamanca, his hometown, and other places in Spain.
The Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities had called for this Tuesday an emergency meeting of the board of trustees, the governing body of this public center, to analyze the situation and make the necessary decisions. Last week the details of a complaint filed with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office that alerted of grants to companies related to the senior management of the organization, or to former employees, became known.
who began working at the CNIO in 2005 and has developed a good part of his professional career there, was fired in August along with another director of the center with whom he was supposedly analyzing the entity’s accounts and uncovering alleged irregularities. Both former employees – the complaint was presented at the end of June – to two senior officials of the Ministry: the Secretary of State Juan Cruz Cigudosa, and the Secretary General of Research, Eva Ortega Paíno. Sources from the department headed by Diana Morant assure that the board was briefly informed of the dismissals and their context, and that the members did not ask for more details; but there are employers who deny having been informed of the complaint.
The president of the board is the general secretary of Research, Eva Ortega Paíno, with an honorary presidency reserved for Diana Morant, who is in Valencia today for the opening of the academic year and to attend the delivery of the Jaume I Awards. On the board there is also a vice president, director of the Carlos III Health Institute, four ex-officio members —Javier Padilla, Secretary of State for Health, president of the CSIC, Borja Monreal, of the Government Presidency Cabinet, and Marta Ortiz, deputy general director at Carlos III—, 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 Contra el Cancer Foundation. Also participating are Ángela Nieto, representative of the Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council, and the legal representative of the CNIO, who is its new managing director, José Manuel Bernabé.
He has been mired in a deep crisis for more than a year that he seems unable to overcome. Created in 1998, the organization is frequently cited as the largest and best cancer research center in Spain, and one of the best in the world. But behind that showcase, the organization has experienced several deep crises since its creation. The penultimate one was characterized by the confrontation between its scientific director, , and its manager, Juan Arroyo, to the point that sources from the center speak of a latent internal war that prevented the correct functioning of the center.
At least three years ago, the deterioration of its facilities and the breakdown of fundamental instruments for research, such as confocal microscopes, began to be evident. Of the four that the organization had, the animal facility, with more than 30,000 laboratory mice, had broken cleaning systems, with the health problems that this entails.
Some of its scientists alerted both the scientific management of the organization, headed by María Blasco, and the Ministry of Science to the problems on several occasions since 2022. The crisis was not resolved. At the end of 2024, half of the scientific heads of Blasco’s organization. This group was especially concerned about the decline of the center as a national and international reference.
According to a report prepared by these heads of the CNIO for the Ministry of Science, the production of high-quality science has fallen in recent years, and so has the organization’s ability to attract top-level researchers. This group considered that part of the explanation for these problems lay in the mismanagement of Blasco, who had been at the head of the CNIO since 2011 without his replacement having been publicly raised. Furthermore, the center, with a total budget of about 40 million euros per year, had a deficit of 4.5 million.
María Blasco and the managing director of the organization, Juan Arroyo, were dismissed by the center’s board unanimously on January 29, as. In addition to his alleged mismanagement as the center’s scientific manager, Blasco was subject to several allegations of . The organization appointed two provisional replacements, manager Maribel Salido and scientific director Fernando Peláez.
The previous stage was characterized by the confrontation between Blasco and Arroyo and their respective supporters. With the new appointments, the situation did not improve, at least in terms of management, to the point that the center dismissed two managers with disciplinary files for allegedly endangering the integrity of the center and its workers, according to sources familiar with the process. The two fired executives were management veterans at CNIO, and had worked side by side with Arroyo for years without any apparent problems. But after the manager’s fall, everything went wrong. One of them claims to have come across a wide catalog of irregularities in hiring and the existence of a network of friendly companies in which the hiring fell.
This former employee reported these facts to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, which has admitted the complaint, but has not yet opened proceedings or contacted any of those involved. A key point is whether it is demonstrated that those responsible for contracting at the CNIO took a bite out of these irregular contracts, something that the complainant has not detected.
The new permanent dome of the CNIO is half closed. The new managing director, José Manuel Bernabé, has been in his position since September with two responsibilities: reviving the CNIO and clarifying whether there were irregularities in the hiring.
Raúl Rabadán, a physicist and bioinformatician from Madrid, has been appointed, but has not yet been able to assume his position 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 his task at the beginning of next year, according to sources from the Ministry of Science.
Yesterday afternoon, at an event in Alicante, journalists asked Diana Morant about the complainant’s statements in . The Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities said: “If there has been any type of irregularity at the CNIO or any amount of money that should have been intended to cure cancer has been misappropriated, it has our complete condemnation.” Morant stressed again that one of Barnabas’ tasks is to determine “if any irregularities have been committed.” “We are not aware of the complaint, but we are at the disposal of the justice system to pass on the CNIO information that is necessary,” he added.
