Article By David Hawkins
Dr. Abdillahi Hashi Abib, a sitting member of Somalia’s Parliament and its Foreign Affairs Committee, is warning that his country’s government has effectively become a “fraud pipeline,” working with Somali fraudsters living in the U.S. to siphon stolen American taxpayer dollars intended for humanitarian aid, health care, and child care into one of the world’s poorest and most corrupt nations.
In an interview with The Daily Caller, Abib said the sprawling fraud scandals now being uncovered in Minnesota and other parts of the United States did not emerge in isolation.
Instead, he argued, they are the downstream consequence of decades of entrenched corruption inside the Somali state.
Abib said his assessment is based on firsthand experience within Somalia’s government and extensive financial data he claims ties senior political figures to systematic fraud.
He added that he has repeatedly attempted to share this information with U.S. agencies, only to be ignored until recent investigations and media reports forced the issue into public view.
Even now, Abib said, what has been exposed represents only a fraction of the problem.
According to the lawmaker, he has provided U.S. officials with a “roadmap” aimed at cutting off Somali-linked fraud at its source by rebuilding Somalia’s governing institutions while aligning reforms with President Donald Trump’s America First agenda.
In a 2023 letter outlining what he described as a “sample of Somalia government fraud,” a parliamentary committee compiled more than 400 gigabytes of data detailing itemized expenditures between July 2022 and June 2023.
The report accuses Somalia’s executive branch of widespread illegal spending and misuse of public funds.
Somalia’s annual GDP per capita is roughly $600, according to data from the World Bank Group.
The committee’s findings allege that government officials drained public coffers through cash withdrawals with no receipts, inflated travel expenses, and purchases of unnecessary items such as furniture, vehicles, and office space, often bought at inflated prices from family-owned businesses without public bidding.
The report also cites recurring monthly payments to allegedly “fake” senior advisers and advisory firms.
The letter further accuses the general manager of the Central Bank of Somalia of tax evasion, alleging that roughly a quarter of his salary was reclassified as bonuses to avoid taxation.
“As you are undoubtedly aware, corruption poses a significant threat to global economic growth, hinders development, undermines democracy, and provides fertile ground for criminal and terrorist activities,” the 2023 letter states, while faulting the Biden-Harris administration for failing to hold Somalia’s leadership accountable.
In a follow-up letter sent Sunday to Somalia’s auditor general, Abib expanded on what he described as the “systemic looting of humanitarian aid funded overwhelmingly by U.S. taxpayers.”
According to the letter, more than $3.5 billion has been allocated to humanitarian assistance in Somalia by international partners, with approximately 90 percent coming from the United States.
Abib described that funding stream as a direct “defrauding of U.S. taxpayers.”
Funds intended for humanitarian relief “have been captured and monetized” by family-run enterprises, the letter claims.
It alleges that three brothers of the chairman of the Somali Disaster Management Agency received monthly “consultancy fees” registered under their wives’ names.
Those payments reportedly totaled $1.53 million over the past 36 months, effectively transforming the agency into what the letter describes as a “family-controlled criminal enterprise.”
“This is not incidental nepotism. It is deliberate structural capture, designed to defeat oversight and facilitate theft,” the letter states.
Abib further alleged that the agency’s chairman accumulated multiple properties, luxury vehicles, and frequent international travel despite being “publicly known in 2022 to lack even the personal means to purchase a cup of coffee.”
“The Relief Department, which should be the last line of defense for starving citizens,” Abib wrote, “has become the engine of food aid theft.”
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