By P.J. Tobia

Nashville , November 16, 2006 – To many East Africans, Dahabshil Inc. is a lifeline to home. The company, which operates in 11 states from Oregon to Maine, allows people in the U.S to transfer cash to a number of Africa’s most impoverished countries.

Last Saturday, Dahabshil’s Nashville office on Murfreesboro Road was packed with Somalis, Ethiopians and other East Africans. They were there to help put food on the tables and clothes on the backs of the families that they left behind.

“This is like sending my family bread,” said a Sudanese man who was waiting in line. In his hand was a neatly folded, quarter-inch-thick stack of American dollars.

But for another Nashville man, Dahabshil may have taken bread away from his dying mother in Ethiopia. In May, Abdourahman Ismail deposited $24,000 at the Dahabshil office on Murfreesboro Pike. In a lawsuit recently filed in Davidson County Chancery Court, Ismail says that the money was to be used on a trip that he was taking to see his elderly mother in Ethiopia. He planned to have Dahabshil wire the money there so that he could withdraw it as needed while he traveled in Africa.

The trip was important to Ismail, who thought that, because of his mother’s age and sickness, she didn’t have long to live. This journey to his homeland was to be the last time he would see his mother alive, but he had to cancel the trip.

That’s because, just before 3 a.m. on May 22, about two weeks after Ismail had entrusted his cash (proceeds from the recent sale of his small business) to Dahabshil, the police were dispatched to the company’s Murfreesboro Road location. When the cops arrived on the scene, they found a broken window and an empty space where “a large safe containing $180,000 in U.S. currency and $40,000 in various payroll checks” used to be, according to a police report. Included in the thieves’ haul was Ismail’s $24,000.

According to the court filing, Ismail was “shocked and surprised” that his money was still on the Dahabshil premises nearly two weeks after he’d paid to have it transferred to Ethiopia. The filing also says that Ismail confronted Ibrahim Farah, the manager of the Nashville Dahabshil location, and demanded that the company return his money. Farah refused.

Farah, reached at Dahabshil, declines to talk about the robbery or Ismail’s missing money. “I cannot comment on that,” he says.

The president of Dahabshil Inc., Isak Warsame, who lives in Ohio (where the company is based), claims never to have heard of Abdourahman Ismail or his lawsuit.

Ismail’s lawsuit tells a different story. It says that Warsame personally came to Nashville after the robbery “to investigate the ‘burglary.’ ” It further states that Ismail confronted Warsame and demanded the return of his $24,000. “Warsame, speaking for Dahabshil Inc., dismissed the request and told (Ismail) to look to Ibrahim (Farah) for his money, not Dahabshil.”

Ismail told Warsame that he would get an attorney and sue to get his money back.

According to the court documents, Warsame then “threatened (Ismail) that if he got a lawyer he would never get his money.” Warsame told Ismail about someone else who had tried to sue the company to recover lost money. In that case, Warsame told Ismail, Dahabshil “spent five times the amount of money being claimed (on lawyers) and was able to prevent that person from getting his money back,” the lawsuit claims.

Ismail, already out of a significant amount of money, initially didn’t want to incur further expense by going to court. He instead turned to the Tennessee Department of Financial Institutions (TDFI), which is responsible for licensing and keeping tabs on all financial institutions that operate in the state, from SunTrust Bank to your neighborhood check-cashing store.

Six months later, TDFI still hasn’t come to his aid. “We take all consumer complaints very seriously,” says Michael Igney, assistant commissioner for compliance at TDFI.

Though it seems like a straightforward case—Dahabshil is bonded and should therefore cover a loss such as Ismail’s—Igney says that there may be more to it. “Some complaints take longer to reconcile than others,” he says. “There’s an ongoing dialogue between the department and the consumer and the department and the licensee.”

Ismail’s lawsuit charges that Dahabshil misled the TDFI during this dialogue. He says that at first the company denied that the transaction ever occurred. When he showed them his receipt, Dahabshil then made a number of contradictory excuses, including that Dahabshil was “holding the funds to enable (Ismail) to make withdrawals” and that it was “serving as a mediator for a division between (Ismail) and his wife.”

Igney says that his department is still “working the case—hard.”

In any case, Ismail got fed up with the “ongoing dialogue” and decided to take Warsame, Farah and Dahabshil to court. Ismail probably will face stiff resistance from a rich and powerful company that is in some ways the centerpiece of the East African immigrant community.

In February 2005, Warsame told Reuters that Dahabshil sends $80 million to $90 million a year to Somalia alone. Dahabshil charges about 5 percent of the total remittance for each transaction, which adds up to a considerable chunk of the $1 billion that the U.N. says Somalis send back to their country each year.

After 9/11, Dahabshil and other companies that transfer money to East Africa—there are at least three in Middle Tennessee—were put under a microscope by state and federal financial investigators for suspected ties to terrorist financial networks. Though no such ties were found, TDFI temporarily shut down many of these businesses, including Dahabshil, for improperly filed paperwork or licenses. The shutdown prompted some to drive as far as Atlanta, Minneapolis or Columbus to send money home. Some East Africans pulled up stakes and relocated altogether.

Dahabshil’s profits and importance to the community it serves have made the company a powerful entity.

Last summer, when Dahabshil president and CEO Warsame was having trouble with big international banks closing Dahabshil accounts and refusing to do business with his company, he went straight to the U.S. Congress. On June 21, Warsame testified before the House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit and asked that the committee “take steps to slow or stop the bank account closures that threaten Dahabshil’s business.”

In the meantime, Abdourahman Ismail just wants his money back. His lawsuit requests a jury trial, punitive damages and that his court costs be paid. It promises to be a battle, as Dahabshil is represented by a powerful Washington, D.C., law firm that also represents individuals and organizations being investigated by Congress.

Ismail’s attorney, Vincent Wehby, says that his client doesn’t have much money left to lose.

Source:. Nashville Scene

Home | Contact us | Links | Archives