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Callaghan suspends Trends Publishing R&D grant, calls SFO

Callaghan Innovation suspends Trends Publishing R&D grant, SFO informed

By Fiona Rotherham

Dec. 17 (BusinessDesk) - Callaghan Innovation has suspended a research and development growth grant to Trends Publishing International Ltd following an audit of its funding claims and referred the matter to the Serious Fraud Office.

Trends got approval for a three-year Growth Grant in March this year and received $332,966 before the grant was put on hold. Callaghan Innovation says it doesn’t disclose how much the growth grants are for commercial reasons but there is a cap of $5 million each year.

Concerns about the legitimacy of some of Trend’s claims against the approved funding led to an internal investigation and then independent audit.

Growth grants provide 20 percent public co-funding for qualifying firms’ eligible R&D expenditure. The qualifying criteria includes firms having to have spent at least $300,000 on R&D in each of the last two years and spent at least 1.5 percent of their revenue on R&D in NZ over the last two years.

There is a clawback provision should a change occur that reduces the benefit to New Zealand and any breaches include the right to end the contract and require funds to be repaid with interest.

Suspension of a grant allows a company time to respond to notification of breaches before a decision is made on ending the grant.

(BusinessDesk receives funding from Callaghan Innovation to write on the commercialisation of innovation.)

(BusinessDesk)

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