Columbia University: ICAP Effort Reports and PEPFAR Grant Charges

Columbia University agreed to pay $9,020,073 to resolve the government’s case over ICAP effort reports and PEPFAR grant charges. Columbia admitted that it had failed to verify whether salary charges matched employees’ work on particular grants, resulting in inaccurate reports and mischarged grants.

The settlement concerned a program that had received $125 million in PEPFAR funding through one grant. The government’s examples put an employee’s account of the work beside the percentage on the form. They told different stories.

What the PEPFAR Grants Paid For

Columbia University administered federal grants supporting ICAP’s AIDS- and HIV-related work. ICAP was formerly known as the International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs. This civilian grant fraud case concerned how Columbia charged employee time to those awards.

PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, funded HIV prevention, treatment and care in countries heavily affected by the epidemic. In 2004, Columbia received funding through the Multi-Country Columbia Antiretroviral Program grant, known as MCAP. Over the years, Columbia obtained more than 75 federal grants for ICAP’s HIV- and AIDS-related work.

Columbia used effort reports that purported to show employees’ work across federal, state and private grants, as well as university-sponsored projects. Those reports determined how much a particular grant would pay for an employee’s work.

We see the problem plainly: a worthy mission cannot make an inaccurate payroll allocation accurate. The people depending on HIV prevention and treatment had a stake in where those grant dollars went.

ICAP Effort Reports Were Certified Without Checking the Work

The government alleged that Columbia produced reports for nearly 200 New York City employees without having those employees create or verify them. In the Justice Department’s account of its complaint, Columbia’s Finance Department supplied the information even though its staff had limited or no knowledge of which grants the employees actually worked on.

The reports then went to the grants’ principal investigators for certification. According to the complaint, investigators certified large batches without asking whether the allocation of work was accurate. The government also alleged that ICAP management knew the effort-reporting system was inaccurate.

That is an approval chain with the essential check missing.

The alleged false certifications gave approval to allocations the investigators had not checked.

The Work and the Grant Charges Did Not Match

The complaint’s examples show the alleged mismatch at the employee level. One concerned a finance analyst, another a subcontracts manager, and another the work of seeking future grants. Each exposed a different way the effort report could misstate what an existing award was paying for.

A Finance Analyst’s Work Became a Much Larger Charge

An ICAP finance analyst said that approximately 15% to 20% of his time went to MCAP in fiscal year 2010. The government alleged that his effort report instead listed 85%, with salary charged on that basis.

Work Across Several Grants Became One Grant’s Bill

The government alleged that an ICAP subcontracts manager’s report listed 100% of her effort as MCAP in the same fiscal year, even though she also worked on three other grants.

Competitive Proposal Writing Went Onto Existing Grants

The complaint also alleged that ICAP charged federal grants for competitive grant proposal writing, an activity the government said was not chargeable to those grants. The government alleged that an ICAP grants manager spent a significant part of her time writing competitive proposals, yet her effort report charged all her time to grants, with as much as 92% assigned to MCAP in some years.

Existing awards were allegedly paying for the pursuit of new awards.

What Columbia Admitted in the Settlement

Columbia admitted that it failed to use a suitable means of verifying whether salary and wage charges reflected employees’ actual effort on particular federal grants. It also admitted that certain effort reports contained inaccurate information and that, for a number of years, ICAP charged grants for work that did not belong to those agreements.

The Justice Department announced the court-approved settlement on October 28, 2014, alongside the government’s complaint under the False Claims Act. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York handled the case through its Civil Frauds Unit. The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General investigated and assisted with the case.

Columbia acknowledged that the failure to verify the work produced inaccurate reports and mischarged grants, which is why this case reaches beyond a complaint about untidy administration.

Different Errors Inside the Same Reporting System

The complaint’s examples distinguish an allocation error from charging for work that an existing award could not bear. The finance analyst’s account concerned the portion of his work assigned to MCAP. The subcontracts manager’s account concerned work spread across several awards but charged to one. The proposal-writing example concerned activity directed toward winning future funding. The government’s account treated all of these as consequences of the same unchecked effort-reporting process.

Those distinctions help explain why a completed form was insufficient. The Finance Department supplied allocations without knowing the employees’ actual assignments, while principal investigators approved batches without checking the allocations. A person familiar with the work could supply the missing connection between a reported percentage and a particular grant. Columbia’s admission addressed the failure to make that connection before charging salaries and wages.

The relevant comparison stays at the level of the award and employee. ICAP’s public-health mission explained what the program sought to accomplish; it did not establish which grant should pay for each person’s time.

Scripps and the Same Question About Proposal Time

The Scripps Research Institute faced similar allegations that inadequate effort accounting allowed existing National Institutes of Health grants to pay for faculty work on new grant applications.

The Records Behind an Effort Percentage

For an insider with similar concerns, we examine the connection between actual assignments, effort reports, salary allocations and the people approving them. We assess how that knowledge fits the grant records and approvals, including what management knew about inaccurate reporting. The question is specific to the award that paid: what work did its salary charges represent?

A Whistleblower’s Share of the Recovery

A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay 15% to 30% of what the government recovers.

You Know What the Grant Actually Paid For

If you know the assignments behind an effort report or saw inaccurate allocations approved, speak to one of our Whistleblower Experts about what the grant really paid for. We work beside you to build the case around those decisions and bring in federal grant fraud whistleblower lawyers who understand effort reporting and university payroll. We stay with you through the process, turning your knowledge of the work into your strongest grant fraud whistleblower case.