Yale University made some mistakes and will be writing a really big check because of them.
The esteem New Haven-based school will pay the government $7.6 million to resolve allegations that it broke the law in managing federally funded research grants awarded between January 2000 and December 2006.
Yale and the government reached a civil settlement, federal prosecutors said Tuesday. It resolves allegations that some Yale researchers at times improperly transferred charges to a federal grant account to which those charges were not allocatable.
Researchers allegedly were motivated to carry out the wrongful transfers when the federal grant was near its expiration date and they needed to spend down the remaining grant funds, according to U.S. Attorney’s office. Federal regulations require that unspent grant funds be returned to the Government.
The government also alleged they wrongfully charged 100 percent of their summer effort to grants when the researchers expended significant effort on unrelated work.
The $7.6 million payment has two components: $3.8 million in actual damages for the false claims and $3.8 million assessed as penalties for the false claims.
Prosecutors said Yale did not admit liability in reaching the settlement and cooperated fully with the investigation. Yale acknowledged some errors occurred, but said the university has upgraded its accounting and reporting systems.
