The State Comptroller published a scathing report of
widespread abuses in the research budgets of Israel's major
universities. The combined research budgets of these
institutions is over NIS 600 million -- more than the total
government support for yeshivas altogether. The total budget
of the universities is about ten times greater at some NIS 6
billion.
The problems that the Comptroller found begin at bad
management and certainly reach to the borders of crimes if
not beyond. The Comptroller checked 50 research contracts at
Hebrew University and at Tel Aviv University, and 85 at the
Weizman Institute. This is out of close to 10,000 research
contracts that were executed during the time period in which
the Comptroller's study was carried out (2001-2003).
The Comptroller put his conclusions very delicately: "In the
opinion of the Office of the State Comptroller, the
procedures followed by the universities that were
investigated is not proper, since their reports to those who
supply the financing is not at the required level of
transparency. They asked for financing for the entire amount
spent on the research, but they did not inform them that some
of these expenses are already paid for out of the regular
[university] budget. The result is that the universities and
the researchers received from the sources of financing monies
to which they were not entitled according to the rules of the
grant giver or according to signed contracts; grant givers
who did not have developed rules in this matter were not
given a choice of which expenses to fund."
If someone had written that the Comptroller found that the
universities and the researchers had engaged in duplicity and
fraud, he could not be challenged on the facts. Weizman
Institute, the Comptroller found, ran two sets of books: one
for the researcher and one for the grant giver. The Institute
insisted that what it did was proper, but the Comptroller did
not agree. He also said that the entire system used by
Weizman was open to abuse, and that a new system that the
Institute claimed it was installing, preserved many of the
previous abuses.
The worst abuse, which was very common in the contracts
checked and which the Comptroller said appears to be common
at other institutions as well, is that projects got double
financing for many significant expenses. The university
covered some salaries, for example, out of its regular budget
but also reported it as a research expense under a signed
contract. The result was that when the contract ended there
was still extra money in its account for all those expenses
that were double-funded. That money went into private
research accounts controlled by the researcher without any
oversight.
The universities argued that this arrangement contributed to
academic freedom and the advancement of knowledge. However
the Comptroller replied, "The principles of academic freedom
and scientific research must not serve as a justification for
deviating from accepted accounting principles and proper
disclosure." The amounts involved are millions of shekalim:
at the two universities they added up to over NIS 50 million
in 5761 and 5762 (over $12,000,000)! The amounts at Weizman
were difficult to calculate because of the convoluted books
that it keeps.
Needless to say, the money was not all spent on further
research. The Comptroller found instances of the money having
been spent on renovations, general expenses and salaries
unrelated to any research. Since the sample checked was such
a small amount of the total involved -- just about one
percent -- it can be assumed that the worst abuses were not
found.
What is the lesson that we learn from this?
These findings were virtually ignored in the general Israeli
press. The most extensive reporting of the scandals was in
Yated Ne'eman.
We think that it shows very clearly that all those who
crusade against chareidi institutions are not motivated by
love of justice and hatred of abuse. If that were the case,
they would have screamed at the findings of the Comptroller,
which are quite serious and are found at an institutional
level that is all the more deplorable. Rather chareidi
critics are motivated by love of headlines and hatred of
chareidim, two goals that were obviously in short supply in
the university scandals.
For the record, we say that we deplore chareidi fraud as
strongly as any other fraud, and we applaud efforts to root
out all fraud. But we reject any suggestion that the chareidi
community deserves the special treatment that it has received
in anti-fraud measures in recent years. These measures merely
harass chareidim, and do nothing to uncover the real
problems, especially those that have nothing to do with the
chareidi community.
