Defendant number 75 in Minnesota’s Feeding Our Future fraud is “Burnsville woman” Muna Wais Fidhin. She is apparently the wife or ex- of Somaliland’s foreign minister and some kind of representative of Somaliland in the United States.
The dominant clan of Somaliland is the Isaaq. In Somalia outside of Somaliland the dominant clans are the the Hawiye and Darood. The tribal connections have persisted in Minnesota, although Ilhan Omar’s marriage to the father of her children represented a merger of the two dominant Somali clans.
Somaliland is a breakaway province of Somalia. The United States has yet to extend formal recognition to it, though several Senators have taken up its cause. I should think it’s more important to shut down immigration to the United States from Somalia and Somaliland than to mire ourselves in the Third-World tribal mores that their emigrants have brought with them to the United States.
Muna is charged with fiddlin’ in the manner of other defendants charged and convicted in the Feeding Our Future case. Let’s just say Muna Was Fiddlin’. According to the indictment, she fraudulently claimed to have served some 300,000 meals to 500 children a day, seven days a week, at M5 Café and the nonprofit M5 Care when the use of a nonprofit became necessary, all paid for under the Federal Child Nutrition Program administered by the Minnesota Department of Education. In short order Fidhin pocketed nearly a $1,000,000 net of relatively modest kickbacks to Feeding Our Future’s Somali recruiter.
Earlier this month a Somali news site reported on the repercussions of Muna’s fiddlin’ in “Somaliland statehood dream jolted by U.S. fraud scandal.” The only story the Star Tribune has run on the case so far might make you think it’s a strictly local matter — one involving a “Burnsville woman.” It’s almost funny.
The indictment charges Ms. Fidhin with wire fraud in connection with funds being sent overseas by Amal Financial, an international money transfer company. Mr. Mustafa SL asserts that Fidhin plowed fraudulently procured funds into Somaliland’s presidential contest and that “fraud money bought the presidency.” A perceptive friend comments: “It’s a sad commentary on our state when people in Somaliland are complaining that Minnesota is corrupting them.”
Harir Yasin further explores the possible impact on Somaliland’s cause in the Saxafi Media story “Fraud, Power, and Fallout: The Scandal That Could Derail Somaliland’s Recognition.” Yasin asserts that the case presents “a political and diplomatic crisis with far-reaching implications for Somaliland.” He reports Fidhin’s involvement with Somaliland’s powers-that-be
Yasin does not address the possible injection of fraudulent Feeding Our Future proceeds into Somaliland’s electoral politics. However, Muna was fiddlin’ in Minneapolis politics. In July she contributed $1,000 to the mayoral campaign of the ideologically fetid Omar Fateh. MPR’s Matt Sepic reports that Fateh returned her donation following her indictment earlier this month. The statement provided to Sepic by Omar’s campaign asserts that Fateh does not know Fidhin, had no knowledge of her alleged involvement in the fraud prior to her indictment, and “continues to condemn” it.
The picture is considerably more compromising than Fateh’s statement allows. Before the indictments in the case — when he could have done some good — Fateh made himself a vocal defender of Feeding Our Future. In June 2021, before the FBI raids of the coming January, Fateh appeared at a public event with Feeding Our Future Director Aimee Bock to celebrate its legal victory over the Department of Education. He condemned the department’s attempt to hit the pause button on the fraud as “immoral.” Fateh asserted that he was told by the governor’s office at the time that there was “zero evidence of fraud.”
Fateh is a state senator. Speaking as such at the June 2021 Feeding Our Future celebration, he proclaimed, “What I can tell you is that leadership hears you. Folks at the Capitol hear you. The pressure is really on, and … it’s working.” Fateh was part of the “pressure” that kept the fraud rolling.
Fateh kept kept it up until just before federal authorities executed the Feeding Our Future searches at sites all around the Twin Cities in January 2022 and the case “went overt.” In December 2021, the month before the raids, Fateh asserted that the responsible Minnesota state agencies were “consistently targeting” immigrant businesses.
Bill Glahn analyzed video of the Feeding Our Future celebration here. By Bill’s reckoning, by the way, I believe Fateh is the largest single recipient of campaign donations from Feeding Our Future fraudsters.
Since the FBI raids of January 2022, however, Fateh’s position has “evolved.” He condemns the Feeding Our Future fraud and has returned the thousands of dollars in campaign donations that he received from figures involved in the case. We can now add Fidhin’s to the list.
