Adnan Khamis Abuzanat, a Minnesota businessman, was involved in a health care fraud scheme that cheated the state of Minnesota out of US$ 120,000 in welfare benefits, according to the FBI.
Abuzanat co-owned and managed Frogtown Meats and Groceries (Frogtown) and Dayton Bluff APW Meats and Groceries (APW), in St. Paul, Minnesota. Evidence, including audio and video footage, showed that between March 2000 and February 2004, Abuzanat falsified documents to obtain medical benefits from MinnesotaCare, a federally subsidized healthcare program for low income Minnesotans.
Abuzanat also allegedly told his employees not to charge sales tax on taxable items and to misrepresent the sales as non-taxable. He and his co-conspirators also took $400 dollars a day from the cash registers at his grocery stores and never documented these funds on his tax returns.
The FBI found that the Abuzanat family had over $1 million in personal and company bank accounts.
In 2005, Abuzanat pled guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and health care fraud. He was sentenced to a year in prison and three years of supervised release thereafter. He was also ordered to pay $121,935 in restitution.
Abuzanat appears in a leaked database of property and residency data in the United Arab Emirates compiled by real estate professionals that was obtained by the non-profit group C4ADS and provided to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
He appears in connection with two one-bedroom apartments at the luxury Mall Hotel on Dubai Marina, worth about AED 3.8 million (just over $1,040,630).
When reached for comment on his Dubai cell number, Abuzanat told OCCRP that he had sold his Dubai properties two years ago. When asked about the fraud, he refused to comment.
This story is part of the Global Anti-Corruption Consortium, a collaboration started by OCCRP and Transparency International. For more information, click here.
