State officials in Democrat Gov. Tim Walz’s Minnesota continued to send millions in welfare funding to a Somali charity even after the group’s chairman had been charged in a $9 million fraud case, according to reports.
Records show that Ali Elmi, the chair of a Somali children’s charity named Ka Joog, was arrested and charged in the fraud case in the fall of 2023, but despite the arrest of its board chairman, state officials continued sending $600,000 payments to Ka Joog without any pause or investigation despite Elmi’s arrest, KTSP-TV reported.
Authorities charged Elmi and alleged that he helped steal $9 million in funding from the Personal Care Assistance program, managed by the state Department of Human Services.
Republican Rep. Isaac Schultz blasted the state DHS as being “asleep at the wheel” for continuing the funding despite the fraud. “The left hand isn’t talking to the right hand. State agencies, elected officials, and their offices are failing to communicate within state government to protect the public’s dollars,” he told the station.
It appears that the state has made no effort to discover if Ka Joog’s charitable efforts are legitimate even as they’ve charged its chairman with fraud.
Indeed, Channel 5 found that the charity Ka Joog is still listed as an active charity in good standing with the state despite the case against its chairman and that no investigation of the charity has been initiated.
But despite that veneer of legitimacy, the charity has a long list of complaints against it for neglecting paperwork filing and shirking accountability.
KTSP even found that the group is not even properly listed as an official charity in the state because it has not supplied the proper financial records. Still, more than $2.7 million in state funding has flowed into Ka Joog’s accounts despite the missing filings and lack of official status.
“Minnesotans are incredibly frustrated by this,” Rep. Schultz said. “It is incredibly concerning, especially when it appears like no one is being held accountable.”
In a separate report, KTSP found that as much as $20 million in Minnesota state welfare funding has been doled out to a number of organizations that have not satisfied the requirements nor filed the paperwork to be officially listed as charities.
These groups have neglected the state requirement of registering as a charity with the state’s attorney general’s office, yet many of them are still getting millions of dollars each from state agencies.
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