The local press has paid minimal attention to the indictment of defendant number 75 in Minnesota’s massive Feeding Our Future scandal. She 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.
Somaliland is a breakaway province of Somalia. 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.
The United States has yet to extend formal recognition to Somaliland, but I wonder if Ms. Fidhin may assert diplomatic immunity before the charges against her are resolved. It’s the kind of issue with which the United States Attorneys in New York and the District of Columbia have to deal. However, it’s rare in these parts.
Muna Wais Fidhin 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.
A Somali news site reports on the repercussions in “Somaliland statehood dream jolted by U.S. fraud scandal.” The only report the Star Tribune has run on the case so far might make you think it’s a strictly local story — 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.”
