Charter Chain Concept Schools Fined $4.5 Million by Feds for Self-Dealing

Concept Schools, a network of charter schools administered by exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, consented to pay a $4.5 million fine to close a federal corruption investigation, announced the Justice Department in a press release on Tuesday.

Concept Schools is based in the Chicago area, where it has four schools. The charter management organization runs another 26 schools across Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, and Missouri, according to its Web site.

According to the Justice Department, Concept Schools “rigged the bidding for E-Rate contracts between 2009 and 2012 in favor of chosen technology vendors so that its network of charter schools ... selected the chosen vendors without a meaningful, fair and open bidding process.  Additionally, the government alleged that Concept Schools’ chosen vendors provided equipment at higher prices than those approved by the FCC for equipment with the same functionality.  The government also contended that Concept Schools failed to maintain sufficient control over equipment reimbursed by the FCC, some of which was discovered missing.”

E-Rate is an FCC program designed to provide schools and libraries affordable broadband.

WBEZ of Chicago Public Media reported, “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,” WBEZ continued, “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.”

According to WBEZ, Concept officials claimed the investigation derived from “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.”

Fethulla Gulen and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are indeed sworn enemies. Erdogan has, in fact, pressed the U.S. to turn over Gulen on the grounds that the Turkish cleric was behind the blunted coup against his government in 2016.