ONE of France鈥檚 largest charities, the Association for Cancer Research (ARC), is to be investigated by a Paris judge for allegedly misusing funds donated by the public. A Paris prosecutor decided last week to open the case after, seeing evidence gathered by France鈥檚 national audit board during a financial investigation of the ARC. The future of the 33-year-old charity in now doubt.
A donor is also suing the head of the ARC, Jacques Crozemarie, for breach of trust. The board of directors of the charity is demanding Crozemarie鈥檚 resignation, and is due to meet next week to name a replacement. But this week, Crozemarie was still refusing to stand down.
The results of the audit, leaked to the French daily Lib茅ration, showed that of the 458 million francs (拢60 million) budget in 1993, only 27 per cent was spent on research. The rest went mostly to fund-raising and publicity. The auditors say that this was not what donors were led to believe when they gave to the charity. Crozemarie contests the findings and says that almost half of all donations were spent on research.
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The auditors also criticised the ARC鈥檚 relationship with a group of companies called International Development Communication, which produce the charity鈥檚 brochures and magazines. They were paid almost 200 million francs in 1993. Evidence was found of massive overbilling, especially for paper. According to Lib茅ration, a related company set up in New York paid Crozemarie between 600 000 and 700 000 francs a year from 1990 to 1993.
The audit also criticised the way grants were given to researchers. Only about half of the grant money given in 1993 was evaluated by the association鈥檚 scientific committees. Leon Schwartzenberg, one of six ARC directors writing a response to the audit, says he agrees with its findings.
Rumours of mismanagement at the ARC first surfaced more than a decade ago. Senior cancer scientists and the government are now coming under fire for allowing it to continue operating in the same way. Critics of Crozemarie鈥檚 autocratic style of leadership say that he filled the board with the heads of laboratories that benefited from the association鈥檚 largesse.
In 1994, Pierre Tambourin, who represented the national research agency CNRS on the ARC board, voted against the budget. He says be found it 鈥渆thically unacceptable鈥� for scientists on the board to be receiving large sums of research money.
Cancer specialist Maurice Tubiana, who is on the board of the association, insists that attempts were made to change the way it was run but that 鈥渘othing could be done until Crozemarie was replaced鈥�. Between 1982 and 1988, Tubiana headed the Gustave-Roussy Institute outside Paris, which specialises in cancer research. The institute was one of the association鈥檚 biggest beneficiaries.
Alain Sarasin, another director, says the board was never given complete information about the charity鈥檚 finances. 鈥淓very year we had more money to spend so there was no reason to complain when all the other budgets in France were decreasing,鈥� he says. Sarasin, who also headed one of the association鈥檚 scientific evaluation panels, was awarded about 200 000 francs every two years for research in his own laboratory.
Pierre Chambon, head of the Institute for Genetics and Molecular and Cell Biology near Strasbourg which receives about 3 million francs a year from the ARC, does not believe the board was powerless. 鈥淢embers did not raise problems because they were profiting from the system,鈥� he says. Another member says there is now a sense of 鈥渃ollective guilt鈥� for letting things go on so long. 鈥淣o one imagined the extent of the problems but no one tried to find out either,鈥� he says.
The audit commission was not the first government body to investigate the charity. In 1990 the social affairs inspection agency, IGAS, started looking into the ARC鈥檚 affairs, but had to give up when Crozemarie went to court to stop its investigation. He successfully argued that the government has no jurisdiction over charities.
In 1991, the law was changed to allow the audit commission to investigate the finances of charities.