MONROVIA, Liberia — No federal or state authority has accused Sekou Dukuly of fraud, and that fact, he and his associates argue, has been overshadowed in a recent NPR/MPR News investigation into his Minnesota group home businesses.
Dukuly, the Liberian port director whose companies were the subject of the investigation, is disputing key elements of the story, arguing it conflates his role as a business owner with operational failures at facilities he says he did not personally run day-to-day — while neither the Minnesota Department of Health, the Department of Human Services, nor federal prosecutors have filed fraud charges against him or accused him personally of falsifying Medicaid claims.
Dukuly declined an interview request, saying in a text message that he did not believe it was “the appropriate avenue for addressing these topics, particularly the ones touching on family and legal matters,” adding that “the public record speaks for itself on the operational and licensing questions.”
However, Ishmael Komara, Director of Clinical Services at Golden Touch Health Care LLC, speaking Dukuly’s behalf, said the absence of any fraud finding is significant given how aggressively Minnesota regulators have pursued fraud elsewhere in the group home and Medicaid industry, including criminal charges against operators at other companies. Komara said Dukuly case stands apart from that pattern precisely because no such allegation has been made against him.
Komara also laid out a more detailed rebuttal to specific findings in the investigation.
On the $36 million in Medicaid funds the story reported his companies collected over a decade, he said that figure represents gross reimbursement for staffing, housing and care costs across roughly two dozen facilities — not personal income or profit. He noted that the story does not distinguish between revenue flowing through the businesses and money that reached Dukuly personally, a distinction he called central to understanding his finances. According to him, that amount covers the entire company’s cashflow including income and expenditure, and does not reflect the company’s net profit.
That distinction, he added, also applies to a family court finding cited in the investigation, in which a magistrate found money from group home business accounts had been spent on personal expenses. He described this as a commingling-of-funds issue common among owners of closely held businesses, not evidence of concealment, and note the finding was not part of any criminal or fraud proceeding.
On the neglect findings and resident deaths, which state investigators substantiated in 10 cases across facilities linked to Dukuly, his associates argue that ownership of a company is legally distinct from operational responsibility for a facility on a given day. They point to Minnesota’s own licensing structure, which requires a separately designated on-site assisted living director, as evidence that the state itself distinguishes between the two roles. They say the investigation does not identify, for any of the specific incidents, whether Dukuly was the on-site director of record at the time.
The Minnesota Department of Health has confirmed it took enforcement action against at least one Dukuly-linked facility but has not moved to revoke its license. A department spokesman said state law does not require an assisted living director to reside in Minnesota, though the Department of Human Services said an owner living abroad “would raise concerns for our investigators.”
Separately, tax liens filed against group home properties show three businesses linked to Dukuly withheld more than $45,000 in employee payroll taxes without remitting them to the state. Dukuly’s associates did not dispute the liens but characterized them as a bounded compliance issue rather than part of a broader pattern.
On ownership, Komara said Dukuly had Dukuly does not run the day-to-day affairs of the company. However, when the previous manager was relieved of his post, two years o, the company temporarily listed Dukuly as the manager. However, when a new management team took over, it forgot to update the document. He stepped down as licensed director at two facilities last week after a reporter contacted him for comment. Under state rules, his company has 30 days to name a replacement. As of Friday, he remained listed as director of a third facility, operated by Golden Touch Health Care, in the state’s licensing database.
