A Michigan nonprofit that had a state grant stripped last year in the face of public scrutiny is now suing to get its funding back.
In 2022, state lawmakers put a $20 million grant into the state budget for an organization to attract businesses from abroad. The Michigan Attorney General would later call the wording of that budget item a “glass slipper” that could only apply to one entity: Global Link International, a Farmington Hills-based nonprofit formed days after the budget passed.
Global Link received the first $10 million of its funding in 2023. But within about a year, the organization faced backlash for its director’s $550,000 annual salary and other spending, including on lawyers, airfare, and office furniture.
Tarik Turfe, a lawyer for Global Link, argued the group’s spending was related to its mission.
“This is to attract on a global stage competing, not with other counties or other states, but competing with other countries, for large investments in the state of Michigan. In the millions, if not billions of dollars” would be needed, Turfe said Thursday.
The lawmakers set up the grant to go through the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, which canceled it last year. Tax filings from fiscal year 2024 show the organization had spent around $1.9 million that year.
Turfe claims the MEDC had no right to demand the money be returned, given that lawmakers specifically appropriated the funding. He said the group was keeping up with its end of the agreement with the state.
“We felt that some of these actions and some of these decisions that are made outside of the Legislature's appropriation go against what the representatives and the senators wanted to accomplish by the budget,” Turfe said.
He filed a lawsuit, first reported by the Detroit News, against the MEDC Wednesday in Ingham County Circuit Court, seeking the reinstatement of the funding, as well as at least $25,000 in damages.
The MEDC declined to comment Thursday morning, saying it hadn’t yet been served with the complaint.
That same day the suit was filed, the Michigan Attorney General announced felony charges against Global Link Executive Director Fay Beydoun for allegedly misusing state funds. The office had already frozen Beydoun and Global Link’s bank accounts.
On Wednesday, lawyers representing Global Link also filed a brief against that freeze in the 47th District Court in Farmington Hills, where Beydoun was charged. The brief alleges the Attorney General was taking a search warrant too far by freezing the accounts and seizing at least “37 pieces of property.”
Turfe claimed Michigan had lost out on business investment because Beydoun and Global Link couldn’t access its funds.
“The investigation eliminated Global Link from having the ability to do anything else to further meet the process," Turfe said. “Global Link was doing its job. It was conducting the necessary matters to attract businesses to come to Michigan. And when its assets were frozen by the government, it can no longer perform its function.”
The Michigan Attorney General’s office did not respond to a request for comment Thursday on the lawsuits filed by Global Link, but on Wednesday, in reference to Beydoun's leadership of the organization, Attorney General Dana Nessel said her office couldn’t tie any business investment in the state to Global Link’s work.
The matter over property seizure is set to next appear in court on May 19.
