Sabti 8 June 2024 {HMC}  A federal jury in Minneapolis on Friday convicted five people who had been accused of embezzling millions of government dollars from programs aimed at feeding hungry children during the pandemic. Two others accused in the case were acquitted.

The trial, the first of what is expected to be several, lasted six weeks. It ended with a stunning revelation from a juror, who officials said was apparently given a gift bag crammed with $120,000 in a bribe attempt seeking acquittals.

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The juror was dismissed and an alternate juror took part in deliberations. A second juror was also replaced, court officials said on Tuesday, because the juror had learned about the attempted bribe.

The six men and the one woman on trial in Minnesota had been charged with several felonies, including wire fraud, federal programs bribery and money laundering. In the end, four of the men and the woman were convicted. Some of the most serious charges can carry sentences of up to 20 years in prison.

They were accused of stealing more than $40 million from government programs meant to feed hungry children, through a nonprofit called Feeding Our Future, based just outside Minneapolis.

The five convicted were among 70 people charged with stealing a total of $250 million from federal food-aid programs in Minnesota in what prosecutors described as one of the largest fraud cases the Department of Justice has overseen in recent years.

Prosecutors said people claiming to feed children were able to collect funds as pandemic-era rules loosened government oversight and federal officials stopped visiting feeding sites in person to verify that food was being provided to children.

Prosecutors said those charged had claimed to be serving meals to children during the pandemic, but rarely did. Instead, they said, the defendants used the money to buy cryptocurrency, liquor, luxury cars and custom homes.

At the trial, defense lawyers asserted that the defendants had indeed used the money to purchase food and feed needy people. They also attacked the credibility of a witness who had cooperated with the government and agreed to testify against them.

The people on trial were Somali immigrants, ranging in age from 23 to 51 and living in various neighborhoods around the Twin Cities. Those convicted were Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, Mohamed Jama Ismail, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff and Hayat Mohamed Nur.

Said Shafii Farah and Abdiwahab Maalim Aftin, whose defense lawyers had said they had only minor roles in the food distribution operation, were acquitted.

After the allegation of an attempt to bribe a juror emerged on Monday, Judge Nancy Brasel of U.S. District Court ordered that the remaining jurors be isolated during deliberations to avoid additional problems.

An investigation into the bribe attempt was underway, officials said. Bribing a juror is a felony. A federal judge on Monday permitted the F.B.I. to seize and inspect cellphones of the seven defendants as part of the investigation, and the seven were ordered to be held in jail while awaiting the jury’s verdict.

Ernesto Londoño is a Times reporter based in Minnesota, covering news in the Midwest and drug use and counternarcotics policy. More about Ernesto Londoño

David A. Fahrenthold is an investigative reporter writing about nonprofit organizations. He has been a reporter for two decades. More about David A. Fahrenthold

Sabti 8 June 2024 {HMC}  Kenyans are learning the truth of the old adage that taxes – along with death – are the only two certainties of life.

This is because President William Ruto is trying to convince them that they should hand over more of their hard-earned cash, saying that, if anything, they are under-taxed.

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He recently argued that Kenyans have “been socialised to believe they pay the highest taxes” when in fact, he added, the overall tax burden was lower compared to some other countries in Africa and beyond.
“We must be able to enhance our taxes,” he said, but acknowledged that it was “going to be difficult”.
Since he was elected president in August 2022, Mr Ruto’s government has raised a host of taxes while also introducing new ones.

Taxes on salaries have gone up, the sales tax on fuel has doubled and people are also paying a new housing levy and are due to pay more for health insurance.

Mr Ruto’s message is that if people want better public services and a reduction in the country’s debt burden then they have to pay up.

But many are angry.

The imposition of some of the new taxes, amid the rising cost of living, led to deadly street protests last year.

Today, ordinary conversations are often dominated by the pain of taxation, and the president’s view has exasperated Kenyans who already feel overburdened.

Mr Ruto said that last year government tax revenue amounted to 14% of the value of the economy as a whole, a figure that is known as the tax-to-GDP ratio, whereas the number for Kenya’s “peers in the continent is on average between 22% and 25%”.

This “means our taxes are way below those of our peers”, the president insisted.

However, it was not exactly clear which countries he meant by “peers”. While it is true that South Africa, Morocco, Mauritius and Namibia all have tax-to-GDP ratios close to or higher than 20%, many others, including Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia, do not.

According to an African Union report, in 2021 the average for the continent as a whole was 15.6% – not much higher than Kenya’s.

Opposition figure and lawyer Miguna Miguna summed up the incredulity that many felt.

“Kenyans are overtaxed, repressed, exploited and abused,” he posted on X, formerly Twitter, adding that people “don’t receive even 1% worth of value from our taxes!”

Despite the uproar, more taxes will be coming – the president has made a case for increasing taxes in the next couple of years to at least a 20% of GDP by the end of his term in 2027.

He has defended the raising of more taxes in order to boost government revenue and reduce borrowing.

Kenya has a national debt of nearly $80bn (£62bn) much of it inherited from previous administrations.

“The last regime went on a borrowing spree. Our regime is balancing, paying off debts plus re-generating the economy,” government spokesman Isaac Mwaura told the BBC.

Already, the government’s budget proposal for the next financial year introduces new measures that seem unpopular, including a mandatory tax for car owners and sales taxes on bread as well as financial transactions.

But economist Odhiambo Ramogi argues that focusing on the tax-to-GDP ratio is the wrong remedy.
He says that rather than taxes being too low, tax collection is inefficient and poor governance means that a lot of state spending goes to waste.

The economist points out that despite taxes going up the tax-to-GDP ratio has actually fallen, suggesting that more people are withholding their money.

He attributes this to the effect of the “Laffer curve” – a theory that tries to explain the relationship between taxes and revenue. It suggests that when they go beyond a certain point they reduce people’s incentive to work and pay up.

“High tax rates naturally lead to low collection,” he says.

Mr Ramogi says that countries in the West with high tax rates generally have good public services to show for it.

In contrast, he argues, despite there being many taxes and levies waiting for Kenyans, people still have to “pay school fees, hospital bills, you have to pay for all public services, it’s double taxation all across the board”.

He says that in order to grow, Kenya should first ensure taxes are properly collected and utilised, as well as eliminate corruption – a problem which the government spokesman says President Ruto is already “very clear” in addressing.

Ken Gichinga, the chief executive of analyst firm Mentoria Economics, adds that higher taxes may be self-defeating as they increase the cost of doing business, which leads to closures, job losses and subsequently a reduction in the amount raised from income tax.

There are also some who challenge the logic of the president’s case that raising the tax burden to match some other African countries will necessarily produce a better economic outcome.

Economist and former MP Billow Kerrow mentions two of Africa’s largest economies: Nigeria, which in 2021 had a low tax-to-GDP ratio, and South Africa, which had one of the highest on the continent. In other words, the tax rate is not an indication of the strength of an economy.

“The crazy focus by the government on tax is completely misleading,” Mr Kerrow told KTN television.
But the president appears determined.

“I have a lot of explaining to do,” he said.

“People will complain but I know finally they will appreciate… We have to begin to live within our means.”

Sabti 8 June 2024 {HMC}  Refugees from Sudan’s civil war who fled into neighbouring Ethiopia say they have been forced to move on again and take shelter in a forest and on roadsides after repeated attacks by gunmen left their tents pock-marked with bullet holes.

About 8,000 people have left the Kumer and Awlala refugee camps, set up by the United Nations in Ethiopia’s northern Amhara region, since repeated assaults last month, mostly by bandits, camp representatives told Reuters this week.

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They had originally fled fighting that broke out between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April 2023 that has led to extreme hunger in parts of that country and accusations of ethnic cleansing in Darfur.
“We left our country because we were scared of the stray bullets from the army and RSF,” one young man told Reuters by phone.

“We sought refuge in Ethiopia to save our lives, and now we are facing the same danger.”

He said he had originally left Sudan’s capital Khartoum, then the camps, and was now sheltering in a forest with fellow refugees in the Amhara region – where militias have been battling Ethiopian federal government troops in a separate conflict.

Images sent via WhatsApp and Telegram showed makeshift dwellings made out of branches and tarp, and scores of people, including many children, sitting outside along a roadside. Reuters confirmed the date and location of the photographs.

Like others there, the young man spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he feared reprisals. Their accounts highlighted the lack of options facing Sudan’s refugees as they look for shelter in countries with their own conflicts and shortages.

The Ethiopian government’s Refugee and Returnee Service did not respond to requests for comment. In early May it said it was engaged with refugees to address safety and service concerns, despite limited resources.

The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR referred Reuters to a statement from last week that acknowledged security incidents and a “deeply challenging” security environment, without going into further details.

In the statement it said Ethiopian police had increased patrols, and that it continued to provide services inside the two camps and to encourage what it said were around 1,000 people outside Awlala to return.

There was no-one immediately available to comment on the different estimate of the numbers involved.

Sudan’s war has created the world’s largest displacement crisis, with more than 8.9 million people fleeing their homes. Of the 2.1 million who left the country, more than 122,000 have gone to Ethiopia, according to the International Organization for Migration.

The aid group Medical Teams International, which has run a clinic near the camps in Ethiopia, said last week one of its staff was killed after armed men fired on a convoy.

‘CATASTROPHE AFTER CATASTROPHE’

Refugees who were now sheltering outside the camps told Reuters people faced regular violence.
“People have to go to the valley to bathe and wash clothes. But they are either robbed, beaten up, or kidnapped daily,” said one member of a camp leadership committee.

“We are facing catastrophe after catastrophe,” they said.

Cholera has spread in Kumer, where there was at most one doctor available to see patients, several refugees and an aid worker, who asked not to be named, said. Monthly food deliveries by the U.N.

World Food Programme last less than two weeks, two refugees told Reuters.

Three refugees told Reuters that about 6,000 people from Kumer and Awlala had set off together on May 1 to walk 170 km (105 miles) to the UNHCR’s headquarters in Amhara’s main city of Gondar to protest about their conditions.

They were stopped by police and sought shelter in a forest near the Awlala camp, the three refugees said.

Many of them began a 10-day hunger strike over conditions as supplies ran low, which they stopped after donations came in from Sudanese abroad, the only assistance received so far, the three said.

About 2,000 who remained at Kumer fled onto a main road after armed men began firing at the camp on May 1, the committee member and another refugee said. Those who later returned found gunshots had pierced the tents, they said, convincing them that the men aimed to drive them out.

Aid workers, who asked not to be named, say insecurity and a lack of funds have severely hampered relief efforts.

The U.N. says just $400,000 in funding for Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia has been delivered, opens new tab, out of an appeal, opens new tab for more than $175 million.

Reporting by Nafisa Eltahir, additional reporting by Dawit Endeshaw in Addis Ababa and Milan Pavicic in Gdansk; editing by Aidan Lewis and Andrew Heavens

Sabti 8 June 2024 {HMC}  The Puntland Security Force {PSF} has apprehended two ISIS foreign nationals who they said survived last week’s US airstrike in northeastern Somalia.

According to a statement from the PSF on Saturday, the men identified as Imraan Mohamed Alawi and Mabruuk Nassor Saidi are from Tanzania. The security forces arrested the men 30 km away from the area where the bombing took place, following a tip-off and subsequent pursuit by the PSF.

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A joint airstrike carried out by Somali and U.S. forces killed three Islamic State {IS}-Somalia fighters in a remote area near Dhaardaar, about 81 km southeast of Bosaso, last week.
The so-called IS wing in Somalia has its main base in the Puntland region, northeastern Somalia, and has occasionally clashed with Puntland forces and al-Shabab militants.