LUMC board vice-chairman resigns following fraud revelations

The vice-chairman of the LUMC Board of Directors, Pancras Hogendoorn, is temporarily resigning from his position after reports from Omroep West and Follow the Money. A spokesperson for Leiden University Medical Center confirmed this. The reports revealed, among other things, that he was aware of fraud involving European research funds, but did nothing about it. The LUMC will conduct further investigation.

Follow the Money and Omroep West spoke to several former LUMC PhD students and have an internal security report from 2019 in hand. This shows that Percuros BV, a grant agency that the hospital used when applying for large international research projects, “deliberately defrauded for its own financial benefit”.

A whistleblower sounded the alarm in the spring of 2022 after having a conversation with Hogendoorn in December 2021 about being dismissed from an EU-funded project, Omroep West and Follow the Money reported.

Hogendoorn said in a response that when reviewing the questions posed by journalists from Follow the Money and Omroep West “about serious irregularities in European programs observed this spring”, it turned out that he had overlooked a signal at the end of December 2021 that “in retrospect could have been an indication of these irregularities”. “I am aware that this perception could hinder me in my work and damage LUMC’s reputation until it is objectively refuted.”

“All of this is why he is stepping down from his duties as dean and vice chair of the board, at least for the time being,” a LUMC spokesperson said.