More than one billion Swedish kronor (€92.4 million) in taxpayer funds intended for preschools and schools have been siphoned off through an Islamist-affiliated welfare fraud network in Sweden. A recent probe found that funds meant to support Sweden’s education system were diverted through a network of independent schools allegedly linked to radical Islamist activity.
The findings followed a police raid on an apartment in Gävle, north of Stockholm, where several individuals connected to a radical and violent Islamist extremist group were staying. Police were searching for Rabie Karam, described as “one of the main actors” in a network of schools accused of recruiting and spreading radical Islam.
One of the most prominent cases of fraud involves a Gothenburg school that received 462 million kronor in public funding. Somali-Swedish former MP Abdirizik Waberi served as principal and was convicted of siphoning off 12 million kronor (€1.11 million) through fake invoices. According to the report, large sums were sent to Waberi’s Islamist party in Somalia, while other funds were used for private purchases, including Thai sex clubs, political party membership fees, and trips to luxury hotels in Southeast Asia and Kenya.
The owner of another Gothenburg school, which employed former Islamic State terrorists who had returned to Sweden, also stole millions of kronor, transferring the money to Malta before disappearing.
Somali immigrants have abused the Western welfare system elsewhere too. The same scheme of siphoning public funds intended for childcare has been used in Minnesota, with U.S. federal authorities launching a high-profile review of alleged fraud involving centers run by Somali immigrants.
The fraud scheme gained traction after a conservative YouTuber alleged that several centers were taking public money without providing care. In his video, independent journalist Nick Shirley went to at least a dozen Somali led daycare centers looking for information about their services, only to find there were no children in these centers, despite their receiving millions of dollars in annual funding. The same was true for Somali-led healthcare providers shown in the video.
In a post on X, Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill said: “We have frozen all child care payments to the state of Minnesota,” citing “serious allegations that the state of Minnesota has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to fraudulent daycares across Minnesota over the past decade.”
The Department of Health and Human Services said it would suspend the annual payment of $185 million to Minnesota pending a full review and would introduce a “defend the spend” system requiring “justification and a receipt or photo evidence before we send money to a state.” O’Neill added that the agency would target “blatant fraud that seems to be rampant in Minnesota.”
FBI Director Kash Patel said investigations into fraud in Minnesota have been ongoing since the pandemic, adding: “The FBI believes this is just the tip of a very large iceberg. We will continue to follow the money and protect children, and this investigation very much remains ongoing.”
Hungarian MEP András László (Fidesz/Patriots for Europe) commented on the similarity of the two cases saying, “Mass immigration leads to the same failures in Europe and America. Minnesota and Sweden literally experience the same fraud.”
