In a surprising move on Wednesday, one of the defendants in the Feeding Our Future trial took the stand in his own defense.
After four weeks of prosecution testimony, six of the seven people charged with stealing $47 million from federal child nutrition programs chose not to call witnesses or testify themselves.
But Mukhtar Sharif took the opposite tack. Before Sharif testified later in the afternoon, his lawyers called eight witnesses to bolster their case that Sharif's former company, Afrique Hospitality, was a legitimate business that provided real food to real children during the COVID pandemic.
Federal prosecutors allege that Sharif and co-conspirators with ties to a Shakopee brick-and-mortar restaurant chain falsely claimed reimbursement for 18 million meals from two government food programs and diverted the proceeds through a series of shell companies to buy cars, real estate and luxury items.
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The Minnesota U.S. Attorney's Office said the corruption charges were part of a much larger conspiracy to defraud taxpayers of $250 million by exploiting exemptions to rules that allowed restaurants to participate in the meal program. Of the 70 people indicted in related cases, 18 have pleaded guilty.
Prosecutors allege that Sharif falsely claimed to serve as many as 3,500 meals a day at the Dar Al Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington and nearby Oak Grove Middle School. Earlier in the trial, Dina Wade Erdrey, who heads the Bloomington Public Schools Office of Educational Equity, testified that Sharif's claims were excessive.
Dar al-Farooq members and staff testified that they had seen food purchased by Sharif's company being distributed from large trucks in the mosque's parking lot throughout 2021.
Lawyer Caitlin Falk asked Abdikadir Haji, who works at Dar Al Farouk's school, for his reaction to “allegations that food was not provided” at the mosque.
“People can say whatever they want,” Haji replied, “but I am an eyewitness. Every Saturday, trucks come to Dar Al Farouk and people, including me, benefit.”
Other defense witnesses who testified Wednesday included Jacob Steen, a land-use attorney who helped Sharif obtain a zoning change permit for Afrik Hospitality; Yusuf Ali, a businessman who took over Afrik after Sharif was indicted and reopened it as the Zawadi Cultural Center; and Derek Czapiewski, a sales consultant for food wholesaler Sysco, who testified that Sharif's company purchased $1.6 million worth of food in 2021.
Prosecutors allege that while the defendants may have used some of the funds from the nutrition program to buy food, the majority of it went to operating the restaurants and not to feeding children. The government also alleges that Sharif used more than $900,000 from federal nutrition funds to build Afrique Hospitality.
Under questioning from attorney Frederick Goetz late Wednesday, Sharif told jurors how he immigrated to the United States from a Somali refugee camp in Kenya at age 5 as one of 17 siblings and half-siblings, how he was separated from his immediate family as a child in Boston and how he grew up working in Seattle's technology industry and started several businesses.
Sharif, 33, has waived his right to remain silent and is due to be cross-examined by prosecutors on Thursday.
