A federal investigation of Gulen charters in Illinois concluded with a large fine. Gulen charters are associated with the Turkish Imam Fethullah Gulen, who lives in seclusion in Pennsylvania. Gulen charter schools can be recognized by the dominant presence of Turkish people in the board and the staff. In the past, they have been criticized for steering contracts to Turkish-owned firms, regardless of whether they are the low bidder.
The article, written by veteran reporters Dan Mihapoulos and Sarah Karp, describes the conclusion of a lengthy federal investigation.
A politically connected charter school chain based in the Chicago area has agreed to pay $4.5 million to end a long-running federal corruption investigation, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
Concept Schools Inc. — which has four publicly-financed campuses in Chicago and dozens of other charter schools in the Midwest — allegedly engaged in a bid-rigging scheme to steer federally funded technology contracts to insiders.
The costly, civil settlement with the government comes more than six years after federal agents raided the charter operator’s northwest suburban offices and other sites connected to Concept in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.
In a statement this week, the Justice Department alleged Concept officials violated the federal False Claims Act “by engaging in non-competitive bidding practices” when they awarded contracts funded with taxpayer dollars from the government’s E-rate program. Through the program, the government subsidizes internet access at “needy public schools,” officials said.
“Today’s settlement demonstrates our continuing vigilance to ensure that those doing business with the government do not engage in anticompetitive conduct,” said Jeffrey Bossert, the acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “Government contractors and schools that seek to profit at the expense of taxpayers will face serious consequences.”
Concept has denied wrongdoing. The nonprofit organization is based in Schaumburg and runs 30 taxpayer-financed charter schools in Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Indiana and Ohio.
Documents show all of Concept’s revenues come from managing taxpayer-funded schools.
Chicago Public Schools officials — who approved and oversee two Concept campuses in the city — are set to provide about $17 million for those schools this year. The two other Concept-run schools in Chicago are regulated by the state, which is giving them another $22 million for the current year.
The four schools in Chicago, in turn, pay a total of $3.8 million a year to Concept in management fees, records show...
The federal corruption probe came into public view in June 2014, when agents raided Concept’s headquarters at the time in Des Plaines and the Chicago Math and Science Academy, in the Rogers Park neighborhood.
Court records show authorities launched the raids because they suspected a long-running “scheme to defraud a federal program.” The feds said at the time that Concept funneled about $5 million in federal grant funds to insiders and “away from the charter schools,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
In announcing the settlement, the Justice Department accused Concept of giving its E-rate business to “chosen vendors without a meaningful, fair and open bidding process” and alleged the charter operator paid those vendors “higher prices than those approved by the [federal government] for equipment with the same functionality.”
And some of the equipment the federal government paid Concept for was “discovered missing,” the Justice Department said.
But in a statement last week, Concept officials sought to portray the settlement as an exoneration, because the probe did not result in criminal charges. They pointed out that in its press release on the settlement, the Justice Department said the “claims resolved by the settlement are allegations only and there has been no determination of liability…”
Concept officials also said they had been the subject of unfair allegations of wrongdoing from “foreign actors.” Although the statement from the charter operator did not specify what foreign critics they were referring to, the charter chain run by Turkish immigrants has faced criticism from the government of their homeland for several years.
In a civil case in federal court in Chicago in August, the Turkish government sought information about Concept and a long list of “relevant individuals and entities.”
Turkey says Concept and other charter school networks across the U.S. “were created to siphon public, taxpayer funds away from the education of children in order to finance the international political activities of Fethullah Gulen, an exiled Turkish cleric residing in the State of Pennsylvania.”
Gulen once was a staunch supporter of Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But the two men have become bitter enemies, with Erdogan pressing the U.S. to extradite Gulen. Erdogan has accused Gulen of orchestrating a failed coup against him in 2016.
According to the court filing here, Turkey “has initiated an investigation within its own borders to determine whether the proceeds derived from these illegal activities in the United States are being unlawfully transported and transmitted to individuals in Turkey in violation of Turkish criminal law, including international money laundering and fraud…”
Concept also has connections to one of the most powerful politicians in Illinois — state House Speaker and Democratic Party Chairman Michael Madigan of Chicago…
The speaker, his wife Shirley and other Madigan allies repeatedly travelled in Turkey as guests of a Gulen-led foundation and other Turkish groups in Chicago.
According to economic-interest statements he filed with the state, Michael Madigan made four trips to Turkey from 2009 through 2012 — before Gulen fell out with Erdogan.
This is a longer version of same article with details about Missouri Gulen schools.
There’s a lot FISHY about Gulen.
As with fines on Wall Street firms like JP Morgan Chase and Golden Sacks, the fine is just the cost of doing business.
No criminal charges means no disincentive to do it again.
Diane, thank you for posting this! Luckily Chicago has a free press and this is getting covered there. There are three of these Gulen Concept charter schools in St. Louis, MO. Unfortunately, neither the St. Louis Post Dispatch nor St. Louis Public radio chose to cover the initial FBI raids on the headquarters. There are two chances that these media entities will cover this fine and those chances are slim and none.
In a just world, the fine money should come out of the management fees that the Gulen Concept administration takes. Unfortunately, it will likely come out of the part of the tax money that pays teacher salaries, buys supplies, etc.
Also, thanks to Sharon Higgins in California, who years ago started getting people to pay attention to the Gulen charters across the country. Many people have no idea that Gulen charters are so numerous nationally.
Gulden charters are either the biggest or second biggest corporate charter chain, vying with KIPP. The reason so few people recognize this is that Gulen charters operate under different names. The way to spot a Gulen charter is by the unusual number of Turks on the board and the staff.
Either that or by the unusual number of FBI agents around the entrance.
What would be a normal number of Turks on the board and staff, by the way?
The normal number of FBI agents around a regular school is zero.
Michael Madigan is always investigated, but nothing happens. ☹️
Mike wears many hats in Illinois:
Chair, Illinois Democratic Party
(1995?-present)
Speaker of the House (1983-present),
State Representative (1971-present) &
Chicago 13th Ward Committeeperson
(1970-present).
😐
cx: 1998, not 1995
3rd Congressional District, State Central Committeeman (1998-present)
in Ohio, we had this report from Progress Ohio on Concept Schools
Concept Schools manages 19 publicly funded charters schools in Ohio that operate under the names of Horizon Science Academy and Noble Academy.
Founded in Cleveland but now based in Chicago, Concept Schools is affiliated with Turkish Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen. A Cincinnati Enquirer investigation found Concept Schools annually imports dozens of foreign teachers in numbers that far surpass any other school system in the state. In total there are about 120 charter schools in America run by the Concept Schools organization. And while there appears to be no religious indoctrination occurring in the the school, there does seem to be plenty of misconduct with little to no oversight.
In June, 2014 federal agents raided 19 charter schools managed by Concept Schools, including three in Ohio.
A month later, a panel of teachers who formerly worked for the Horizon Science Academy of Dayton told the State Board of Education that they personally witnessed testing irregularities, teachers using racial slurs, an in-class groping game and an administrator who failed to tell parents that their 6th and 8th grade students engaged in oral sex at a school function. Copies of their testimony can be found here.
Their testimony was widely reported:
Former teachers at Turkish-run charter school allege test-cheating, discrimination, sexual activity
The Akron Beacon Journal
Charges of cheating and sexual harassment of students spark investigation of the Horizon Science Academy network
The Cleveland Plain Dealer
WHIO TV Dayton
WCMH-TV Columbus
WBNS-TV Columbus
WKYC-TV Cleveland
Ohio Public Radio
In September 2014, ProgressOhio launched a broad analysis of the 19 Ohio charters managed by Concept Schools. What we found were poor academic results, cheating on standardized tests, weak oversight, missing background checks and unqualified teachers. You can read our full report Concept Schools: Poor Results, Worse Oversight here.
I’m glad the reporters investigated the charter schools, but the fine is a slap on the wrist. The charter company themselves say they have no plans to change the way they do business. They’ll continue to rob the public with those crony contracts- there’s absolutely no reason they would stop. No one is regulating them.
Charter schools are supposed to have authorizers who regulate the schools. The authorizers take a cut of every charter school dollar to supposedly provide oversight. What exactly do they do? Why is the public paying them if they perform no oversight function?
“Officials said the charter school operator is in good financial shape and can pay the fine without additional assistance from its schools. A spokesman for Concept said the money to pay the feds would come from the organization’s “savings.”
This is nonsense and charter operators do it all the time. Every single dollar a charter company takes in is public funds. There are no “savings” they can draw on. They produce no revenue. Of course the money will come “from the schools”. Where else would it come from? Because they’ve created some slush fund of public money that was intended for students but never got to them doesn’t mean it’s “savings”
It’s all public funding. Period.
Chiara, that really threw me off/rumpled my feathers: “Officials said the charter school operator is in good financial shape & can pay the fine…money would come from the organizations ‘savings.'”
Yes–savings from money that came from us, taxpayers. A slush fund is right. Meanwhile, Gulan lives in peace & isolation in his compound
(it’s in PA, am I correct?).
It’s beyond disgusting–seems beyond illegal. 4.5 MILLION payment to end an FBI investigation?
Yet another reason to pursue Madigan. Yeah, Eddie–Madigan has been in office even longer than ALEC has been in existence.
(2021 will be his 50th as IL Rep.!) Time to give him a new home as an anniversary present…
Hi retiredbutmissthekids. 🙂 I guess, Madigan’s district likes him
😐
I’m curious how Chicago Public Schools became involved with charter schools. 🤔
CPS has Urban Prep charter, which is touted as male only. 🤔😮