In July 2022, the Michigan Legislature added nearly $1 billion in earmarks for special projects sought by lawmakers to a $76 billion state budget just hours before the final approval of the spending plan.
Tucked in among the pork barrel projects financed by COVID-era budget surpluses was a purported business accelerator to attract international startup businesses to Michigan, but few details were available at the time.
The spending line item caught the attention of Detroit News political reporter Beth LeBlanc, who started what turned out to be a years-long investigation of what this nonprofit was and how this money was sought.
Eight months later, in March 2023, LeBlanc first reported how Fay Beydoun, a campaign donor and appointee of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, filed paperwork to incorporate Global Link International 10 days after the Michigan Legislature appropriated $20 million to her organization on July 1, according to state records.
The Detroit News outlined how Beydoun, an Oakland County businesswoman, sat on the executive committee of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, which administered Beydoun’s grant. The MEDC annually doles out tens of millions of dollars in economic development incentives to existing and prospective businesses.
But what really turned heads in Lansing a year later was a Detroit News report of how Beydoun was spending the first $10 million of the state’s $20 million grant. She paid for salaries, furniture, a first-class international plane ticket to Budapest and a $4,500 luxury Jura coffee maker.
Beydoun served as a bundler for Whitmer’s campaign for governor, meaning she collected contributions from other donors, sources previously told The Detroit News. She personally donated $7,150 to Whitmer’s campaign in 2019.
The eyebrow-raising coffee maker purchase drew immediate scrutiny from lawmakers and raised a bevy of questions about who monitors how these types of grants are spent.
The April 3, 2024, Detroit News story caught the attention of Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office, which announced two weeks later, on April 18, that it was investigating Beydoun’s outfit.
“The investigation began after The Detroit News published a series of news articles suggesting that Beydoun, a former executive committee member of the MEDC and a former director of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce (the Chamber), may have fraudulently obtained a Michigan enhancement grant awarded to a ‘business’ located at her residence in Farmington Hills,” the Attorney General’s office wrote in a 41-page affidavit filed in court on Monday, outlining the 16 criminal charges against Beydoun.
Nessel said at a Wednesday press conference that Beydoun used her political connections to secure a “glass slipper grant” to enrich herself in a scheme that entangled the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, Whitmer’s office and unnamed “political operatives.”
“It appears per our investigation that Ms. Beydoun never intended to pursue the lawful purpose of the grant and only sought to use these funds for her own personal enrichment,” Nessel said Wednesday.
Among the findings of Detroit News reporting is that Beydoun spent more than $700,000 from the grant after telling Whitmer’s office she would shutter the organization in response to Detroit News reporting. In February 2025, The News revealed Beydoun was paying herself $550,000 anually from the $20 million grant to run the tiny nonprofit organization — three times the governor’s annual salary.
The News’ subsequent use of the Freedom of Information Act to track the spending on this grant revealed in mid-June 2025 that the MEDC canceled the grant payments altogether in March, citing a “misuse” of taxpayer funds, including an “unreasonable” $550,000 salary for Beydoun.
Five days after that story broke, agents with the Attorney General’s investigators raided the state agency administering Global Link’s grant and Beydoun’s home in Farmington Hills.
The reporting resulted in legislative action. On Jan. 29, 2025, the Republican-controlled Michigan House of Representatives adopted a rule banning private businesses and any nonprofit that’s less than three years old from receiving grants. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer also proposed a ban on for-profit businesses receiving direct taxpayer money in the budget, and on requiring that each grant be publicly disclosed at least 5 days before a final vote on the budget.
The Democratic-controlled state Senate eventually disclosed the earmarks its members requested in the final days before the latest state budget was passed, a change from past practices, when the spending items were disclosed hours before a vote, without any lawmaker’s name attached.
In November, Whitmer signed a bill into law requiring 45 days’ advance notice of earmarks before a final vote. Lawmakers cited The News’ reporting on the Beydoun grant as a reason for the reform.
rburr@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Detroit News story prompts Nessel probe, charges against Fay Beydoun
Reporting by Richard Burr, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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