One of the biggest scandals associated with charter school finances has to do with “related parties.” That means that the school engages in financial transactions with a “related party” and money changes hands and ends up in the pockets of friends.

The Gulen schools are one of the nations’ largest charter chains. They are somehow associated or owned by the imam Fethullah Gulen, who lives in seclusion in the Poconos of Pennsylvania. General Michael Flynn apparently offered to extradite Gulen because the Turkish Government blames Gulen for a failed coup. Gulen schools have been accused of hiring Turkish contractors who were not the low bidders on contracts. You can tell a Gulen Charter by the large number of Turks on the board of directors and Turkish teachers.

In Rochester, New York, the local newspaper has uncovered a shady deal between related parties involving a Gulen charter school.

The story reads in part:

“A real estate holding company based in Syracuse cleared more than $300,000 in profit at the expense of a charter school in Greece earlier this year, according to real estate and financial records obtained by the Democrat and Chronicle.

“Both the company, Terra Science and Education Inc., and Rochester Academy Charter School, which opened in 2008 as the first local charter high school, have evident connections with each other, and broadly with the nebulous network of Fethullah Gulen, the reclusive and controversial Turkish cleric living in exile in rural Pennsylvania.

“Both the school and Terra deny there is a connection, but the D&C investigation has found numerous examples of overlapped personnel, lax invoicing, a lack of auditing and shared community affiliations.

“Many Gulen-suspected schools across the country have entered into questionable real estate transactions with related parties, something critics label an attempt to siphon off the public money charter schools receive for their pupils. The importance for Monroe County residents, though, is the disbursal of hundreds of thousands of public dollars to a connected organization.

“Such transactions, while not illegal, point to an oversight weakness in charter schools, which rely more heavily on contracted space and services than traditional public schools.

“The Democrat and Chronicle has rebuilt the timeline of the deal that generated the substantial return for Terra.

*May 2016: Terra Science and Education Inc. buys a shuttered school building on Latta Road from Our Mother of Sorrows Church for $700,000.

*August 2016 to June 2017: Terra spends between $1.2 million and $1.5 million in renovations. Rochester Academy Charter School (RACS) leases the building from Terra in the meantime for $30,000 a month, paying a total of $300,000.

*June 2017: RACS purchases the newly renovated building for $2.5 million — at least $300,000 more than Terra’s costs for purchase and renovation, not including the lease payments.

“The fat profit margin for Terra comes from public funding intended for the hundreds of students attending the school — about $5 million in 2016-17, and growing as the school adds grade levels each year.

“Under normal circumstances, if a developer turned a $300,000 profit after owning a property less than one year and selling it to a public school, it would be evidence of ruthless commercial skill for the one party and hapless poor luck for the other.

“When there is evidence the two parties are connected, it is a different story.”

Bottom line: Taxpayers were ripped off.