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Investigators Allege Wheeling Jesuit VP Unlawfully Diverted Federal Funds; No Charges Filed

By Philip Stahl
WTOV
April 14, 2012

http://www.wtov9.com/news/news/nasa-investigating-wheeling-jesuit-university-scho/nMYbw/

Court documents show NASA is the federal agency that has been investigating Wheeling Jesuit University and the university's vice president of sponsored programs.

Investigators claim in the affidavit that J. Davitt McAteer unlawfully diverted federal funds from federal grants that the university received to nonfederal-sponsored programs.

A 35-page document was released recently. Parts were redacted -- blacked out to protect the identities of investigators, witnesses and the subjects under investigation.

According to the affidavit, NASA's Office of Inspector General has been investigating the university and McAteer since May 2010.

The affidavit says that NASA gave Wheeling Jesuit nearly $116 million since 2005. The affidavit states, "McAteer has utilized his position as head of the (Office of Sponsored Programs) at Wheeling Jesuit to defraud the government by allocating salaries and personal expenses from his private law offices."

The investigation is ongoing, and no one has been charged.

"It's going to be a long investigation. These things take months, sometimes years," said U.S. Attorney William Ihlenfeld of the northern district of West Virginia. "We have a team of attorneys, agents, that are going to look at those records and ultimately come back to me and let me know what they found from looking at all of these documents."

McAteer is well-known as the lead investigator of the Sago Mine and Upper Big Branch Mine disasters in West Virginia. He is also the former head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

The affidavit says a witness at Wheeling Jesuit University wrote a letter to the president in 2008 saying they had concern for McAteer's office. According to the document, the witness said, "It is with concern for Wheeling Jesuit and with personal trepidation that I write to you regarding administrative and financial actions within the Office of Sponsored Programs, that according to my understanding violate federal regulations."

The document says the witness took those concerns to McAteer himself , but McAteer "ignored them. Also released were search warrants detailing thousands of documents seized from the university and McAteer's private law office in Shepherdstown, W.Va.

According to a search warrant issued in February, thousands of paper and digital documents were seized from McAteer's office. Among those documents were reports regarding the January 2006 Sago Mine disaster, the November 2006 Aracoma Alma Mine disaster and the April 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine disaster.

Along with those reports, agents confiscated files, data and records relating to outside contracts and agreements of the National Technology Transfer Center and Center for Educational Technologies at Wheeling Jesuit, time cards, contracts, employment agreements and lease agreements.

The release of the documents was at the request of McAteer's attorney, Stephen Jory, of Elkins. Jory told NEWS9's Philip Stahl over the phone that he had no comment. Wheeling Jesuit officials also said they did not want to comment because they have not seen the documents and don't want to speculate on anything.

Ihlenfeld said the affidavit was sealed until recently -- when the redacted version came out -- and said Jory's motion to do that is uncommon.

"Normally, we would not comment on an ongoing investigation. It's our practice not to. This case is unusual because there were a couple of parties that moved for a search warrant, and an accompanied affidavit could be unsealed, and it was considered by U.S. Magistrate Court, and the court found that the documents should be unsealed," Ihlenfeld said.

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