The latest report from the federal monitor appointed to oversee the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey accuses its interim president of misleading investigators looking into allegations of kickbacks paid by the public-health university’s cardiology department. In the report, which was released today, the monitor, Herbert J. Stern, says the interim president, Bruce C. Vladeck, “engaged in a process of trying to refute, rebut, and bury” draft findings detailing possible federal-law violations prepared by an outside consultant hired by the university.

The state-run medical school is accused of offering high-paying faculty jobs to nearly 20 cardiologists in private practice, including two who had failed their cardiology boards, in order to raise the number of cases in the surgery program, which state officials had threatened to shut down for poor performance.

Those allegations came to light in a whistle-blower lawsuit filed by the former chief of the university’s Division of Cardiology, but the monitor’s report notes that Mr. Vladeck and other administrators failed to notify Mr. Stern’s office of the case and a subsequent $2.2-million settlement. Such a failure is a violation of the agreement that allowed the university to avoid prosecution for Medicaid fraud.

Mr. Vladeck told The Star-Ledger, a newspaper in Newark, that he had not tried to mislead investigators and had only belatedly learned about the lawsuit and the kickback allegations. “I missed it,” he said. The monitor’s report, however, questions Mr. Vladeck’s version of events.

The monitor’s report also, for the first time, puts an estimated price tag on the costs of the kickback scheme, including $5.7-million in illegal payments to physicians, $36-million in improperly billed services to Medicare and Medicaid, and $42-million in possible penalties and fines. The embattled institution already has been accused of $243-million in fraud and abuse.