NIH failed to monitor grant spending by foreign researcher recipients, inspector general reports

The National Institutes of Health systematically failed to track how foreign grant recipients spent their money, according to a report this month from an internal government watchdog.

The Health and Human Services Department’s inspector general found that NIH never obtained the overwhelming majority of required audit reports from foreign recipients it surveyed during fiscal years 2019 and 2020.

When the agency did get reports that needed monitoring, NIH officials failed to follow up 70% of the time.

The failures meant NIH could not monitor or oversee how federal funds were used, according to the inspector general, raising the risk that foreign researchers could misuse funds to benefit themselves and others without U.S. knowledge.

“NIH did not ensure that NIH foreign grant recipients completed and submitted required annual audit reports,” the inspector general said. “NIH did not receive 81 of the 109 annual audit reports for foreign grant recipients that met the requirements for an audit and for which NIH provided the majority of HHS funding.”

The NIH funding protocols came under intense partisan scrutiny over a series of grants eventually totaling $8 million to a U.S.-based health organization from 2014 to 2021.

Some of that grant money was passed to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. The lab’s controversial research has led to speculation that it played a role in the accidental release of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. A previous NIH audit found that the American nonprofit had misreported $90,000 in expenses.

“NIH did not effectively monitor or take timely action to address” compliance problems involving EcoHealth Alliance, the New York City-based nonprofit that held the NIH grant, the HHS inspector general’s office said early this year after an 18-month investigation.

The agency subsequently suspended the EcoHealth Alliance grant and permanently blocked the Wuhan Institute from U.S. government grant money.

The most recent audit found that foreign researchers had received millions of dollars in grants and other funding from NIH. In 2022, the agency approved 224 foreign grant recipients totaling $257 million.

To determine whether NIH officials knew how foreign researchers used the funding, the inspector general gathered a list of 90 NIH grant recipients from 2019 and 2020 who spent more than $750,000.

Auditors found that those 90 foreign recipients should have submitted 109 audit reports, which the HHS audit resolution division collects. The division took responsibility for gathering the reports in October 2018 but did not collect such reports until October 2020, according to the inspector general’s report.

Of those 109 required reports, the division did not receive 81. Ten reports obtained required follow-up actions, but NIH officials failed to complete seven.

The inspector general said NIH officials might not have asked the foreign researchers what they were doing with the funds. NIH also accepted some delays in grant recipients’ reports because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“NIH grants management officials did not provide evidence that they actively reached out to foreign grant recipients to obtain required audit reports for our audit period,” the report said. “Instead, NIH relied on foreign grant recipients to submit audit reports directly to ARD.”

As a result, the inspector general said, the NIH needs to ensure the completion of the outstanding 81 audit reports and push its audit resolution division to identify who must submit reports.

The report said teams of researchers receiving U.S. taxpayer funding with delinquent reports hail from Australia, Botswana, Canada, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Ghana, Mali, Netherlands, Nigeria, South Africa, Sweden, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, United Kingdom and Zimbabwe.

NIH told the inspector general that it agreed with its recommendations and said it had increased the number of auditors working to learn whether the 81 delinquent reports were completed. It told the inspector general it would accomplish the recommended actions by September.

The NIH did not immediately respond to The Washington Times’ request for comment. 

The inspector general’s report is not the first warning that government officials are unaware of how researchers use federal funds.

The inspector general found in 2022 that most grant recipients it surveyed failed to comply with federal requirements for disclosures of foreign financial support. The lack of disclosure presented risks that federally funded researchers’ work was vulnerable to theft by China and other U.S. adversaries.