The chief financial officer of the African Development Foundation, a federal agency affiliated with USAID, will plead guilty to steering grants and contracts in exchange for bribes.

The previously-obscure African Development Foundation became a darling of the Left when its CFO, Mathieu Zahui, locked its doors to prevent Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from entering. Democrat politicians framed it as an act of moral courage, and left-wing media called the group “the little agency that could.”

But on Friday, the Department of Justice said Zahui admitted that he was doing exactly what conservatives have suspected is common in foreign aid: Laundering money through poor nations and then back to D.C. insiders, who used it to enrich themselves.

According to court papers filed Friday, the African Development Foundation sent $800,000 to a Kenya-based company run by Zahui’s friend. The friend paid Zahui a kickback of $12,000, and the company kept $134,886 for doing no work.

The rest of the money was simply a “pass-through” where the Kenyan company paid bills that the agency owed to other people. That made it appear that more money was going to African aid as opposed to bureaucratic overhead, and added a layer that concealed where the agency’s money was actually going.

Zahui has agreed to plead guilty to accepting gratuities and making a false statement to a federal law enforcement officer, after he lied to the USAID Office of Inspector General about having received the kickbacks. He could face up to seven years in prison.

“The USADF Director of Financial Management’s fraudulent acts betrayed the trust of the American people,” the USAID Office of Inspector General’s acting Assistant Inspector General for Investigations Sean M. Bottary said in a statement.

“When they show up, we didn’t let them in”

The Daily Wire broke the story of Zahui’s crimes in May after uncovering a search warrant for Zahui’s phone, granted by a D.C. judge in November 2024, during the Biden administration. The series, titled, This Foreign Aid Agency Locked Its Doors To Keep DOGE Out. Now We Know Why. included details that are redacted in charging papers, which refer to the company only as “Co-Conspirator 1.”

Zahui steered contracts and grants to a firm called Ganiam, which was run by a friend named Maina Gakure. Gakure and Zahui previously worked together for the Department of Veterans Affairs in California, where Gakure was in charge of contracts. Gakure later created his own company designed to exploit the government’s “8(a)” law, which allows minority-owned companies to get no-bid contracts.

He also established an Africa-based version of the company, to which Zahui steered money. (One of the contracts was ostensibly for “travel” during COVID, when travel was shut down.) Each time Zahui awarded Gakure’s company a contract, Gakure would send Zahui kickbacks to his personal bank account, the disgraced CFO admitted in federal court.

The flow of money to Africa made it seem — to Congress, the public, and auditors — that the agency was fulfilling its mission. But Ganiam was actually used as a slush fund, with Gakure serving as an intermediary to pay bills elsewhere — including in D.C.

The Daily Wire interviewed Zahui at his home for nearly two hours in May, where the African immigrant spoke with indignation that his federal job might be ending.

“When they show up, we didn’t let them in,” he said of DOGE auditors. Eventually, the Trump administration changed the locks on the building, but Zahui gained access. “They forget, or they didn’t know there was a back door that they didn’t lock,” he said.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/top-official-of-usaid-linked-foreign-aid-agency-to-plead-guilty-to-taking-bribes

So when is Bondi going to actually convict someone, Trumpkins?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5828794&forum_id=2.#49633727)

the entire Democrat ecosystem runs on massive fraud.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5828794&forum_id=2.#49633733)