A Democrat candidate in Minnesota who defeated a Republican incumbent in the midterm election Tuesday owns a Somali daycare center that is linked to a huge fraud settlement.
The Democratic Farm Labor Party (DFL) (the official name of the Democrat Party in the state) candidate Abdi Daisane is the CEO of Blooming Kids Child Care Center in St. Cloud, Fox News reported Friday, noting he won Minnesota’s House District 14A seat.
Over several years, the childcare center has received over $7 million from the state’s Child Care Assistance Program, the report continued:
His childcare business also received $598,251.62 from the federally-funded Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) since 2020. A nonprofit called Partners in Nutrition, which recently had to pay an $18.5 million civil settlement for fraud, was the center’s sponsor for CACFP funds.
A press release from the settlement says Partners in Nutrition “knowingly defrauded the State of Minnesota out of millions of dollars in federal child nutrition funds during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, in violation of the Minnesota False Claims Act.”
More than 20 locations in Minneapolis were raided in April as federal officials moved to crack down on the alleged fraud linked to Somali-run businesses after citizen journalist Nick Shirley exposed suspected fraud in the state’s Somali community, according to Breitbart News.
The Fox article said it visited the Blooming Kids Child Care Center on Thursday and found the building and area to be quiet and a nearby parking lot mostly empty.
