UNLV paying $1.45M in alleged grant misuse

It gave funds back to federal government

UNLV has paid $1.45 million to resolve a case with the federal government arising from a professor’s alleged improper use of grant money.

The Nevada System of Higher Education’s Board of Regents, which self-reported the incident a few years ago, reached the settlement last month on behalf of UNLV with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General “for allegedly violating the Civil Monetary Penalties Law,” according to a notice dated Feb. 3 and posted online this week.

UNLV provided the Review-journal with a copy of the settlement agreement over a maternal HIV program at the university, which showed a payment due of approximately $1.45 million. Of that, about $1 million was restitution and the rest was a fine.

Executive Vice President/provost Chris Heavey said Thursday that he believes it’s the first time the university has had to pay back a government grant in its more than 60-year history.

“It’s an unfortunate incident and we have thought deeply about our processes and procedures” in order to make sure “problematic activity” is caught earlier, he said.

A principal investigator with UNLV’S maternal HIV program who is no longer employed by the university “submitted improper claims” between September 2015 and August 2018 to several grants the National Institutes of Health and one from the Health Resources and Services Administration, according to the settlement agreement.

The notice and settlement don’t name the principal investigator. But Dr. Echezona Ezeanolue created the maternal HIV program in 2005 while working at the University of Nevada,

Reno, and first received grant funding in 2007 for the program. He ran the program at UNLV from 2015-18.

The Review-journal was unable to reach Ezeanolue for comment Thursday.

Heavey declined Thursday to confirm whether Ezeanolue was the principal investigator, but a financial conflicts of interest disclosure on the university’s website lists him in that role.

“We are not alleging malfeasance or wrongdoing on the part of the investigator,” Heavey said, but UNLV did acknowledge that the university couldn’t justify that expenditures were in furtherance of the grant-funded research and therefore had to refund the money.

The university wire transferred the full payment Feb. 8 to the federal government. The money came from a UNLV investment income account, Heaveysaid.

UNLV suspended the maternal HIV program in September 2017 without notice to the employees or 62 patients.

In October 2017, UNLV placed Ezeanolue and nurse practitioner Dina Patel — who was running the program with him on administrative leave, and they were escorted off campus.

UNLV launched an administrative audit and paid Huron Consulting Group up to $20,000 to conduct it. The findings, however, were kept secret.

A Chapter 6 hearing, where disciplinary action against the employees would have been considered, was scheduled in April 2018 but was canceled because Ezeanolue and Patel were no longer employed by the university. UNLV officials wouldn’t say whether the two resigned.

Dr. David Di John was announced in November 2017 as the maternal HIV program’s new principal investigator.