US cancer centre leaders secretly worked for China, internal report finds

Six researchers who resigned last month from Florida’s Moffitt Cancer Center admitted to opening secret bank accounts in China to hide millions that they received from China’s Thousand Talents programme, say the preliminary findings of an internal investigation.

Among the six were Alan List, Moffitt’s president and chief executive officer, and the centre’s director, Thomas Sellers. They are the latest and most senior researchers to lose their jobs in a nationwide hunt for academics suspected of working for China, in what US authorities claim is an organised attempt to steal intellectual property.

At least 200 people are being investigated at 71 US hospitals, universities, and research institutions. Most of these investigations began when letters arrived from the US …