Three months after Minneapolis Public Schools placed three top finance officials on leave, the district has finally released the results of an outside investigation.
But the heavily redacted report, which names just one of the officials involved, raises as many questions as it answers.
The report, released following a public records request by Sahan Journal, shows that $3 million was diverted from an employee health fund in what finance officials said was an attempt to invest the money for better financial returns for the district. Outside investigators said that explanation did not make sense.
The district says it has since recovered the funds, but the issue led to the firing of one senior manager, who disputed his responsibility for the problem in an interview with Sahan Journal, noting he was hired long after the issue began.
A second senior finance official has since parted ways with the district. Minneapolis Public Schools declined to specify whether he was fired or left voluntarily. A third is still working for the district while a complaint against her remains open.
Investigators said they could not rule out the possibility that the money had left the district.
The turmoil in the finance department comes as the district is grappling with a $50 million budget deficit, and a recently released audit that cited lax financial practices.
A firing and a high-profile exit
Minneapolis Public Schools released the heavily redacted investigative report as part of the termination file of Tariro Chapinduka, who served as the executive director of finance for Minneapolis Public Schools from July 2025 until the school board approved his termination in February.
Chapinduka’s name is one of the only ones unredacted in the report. The names of the other two finance employees placed on leave — Ibrahima Diop, who left Minneapolis Public Schools on Jan. 30 after a long tenure as senior finance officer, and Aaron Gilbert, who still works for Minneapolis Public Schools — do not appear in the redacted version of the report.
The investigative report found that Chapinduka, as well as other redacted names, provided explanations for withholding the funds that were “inconsistent with the facts and contrary to the law governing trusts.”
The report also noted the lack of a satisfactory explanation for why the funds had been withheld.
“Justifications … changed over time, and the Investigators do not find any of them particularly credible,” the investigators wrote. Chapinduka and other redacted names had said the funds had been withheld to generate higher interest rates, but also offered other explanations, like that the fund was an administrative fee, the report said.
The district commissioned the investigation, led by law firm Greene Espel, after an internal review uncovered an accounting problem. Minneapolis Public Schools has several primary bank accounts, including one designated to help with employee health insurance costs. Funds for this account, called a Voluntary Employees’ Beneficiary Association, or VEBA, must be separately held and cannot commingle with other funds, the investigators wrote.
But the district withheld 5% of the funds designated for the VEBA account in the district’s general account, beginning in November 2024 until Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams directed the practice to end in September 2025.
It’s not clear from the heavily redacted investigative report who made that decision or why the funds were withheld. In all, nearly $3 million was withheld.
In a statement, Minneapolis Public Schools said it had recovered the money.
“The amount withheld, plus the interest that would have been earned by it, was transferred back to the trust,” said district spokeswoman Donnie Belcher. “We do not have any information indicating that the money withheld from the trust was spent inappropriately or that it ever left district accounts.”
Belcher said that the district had confirmed that all wire transfers during the relevant time period were proper Minneapolis Public Schools expenses, and was working to confirm that all check payments and electronic bank transfers were proper as well. She also said the district had implemented controls to make sure this will not happen again, and that because the fund was made whole, there was no impact to employee health insurance.
The report from Greene Espel, dated Dec. 31, confirmed that funds had returned to the account.
“But the Investigators have been unable to tell whether the money that was withheld along the way remains in MPS accounts,” the report said. “Because so much money flows in and out of MPS, and for various additional reasons discussed below, the Investigators cannot rule out the notion that someone removed the withheld money from MPS, and VEBA was made whole out of other funds.”
Sayles-Adams noted this issue as well in a Sept. 5 email to a redacted recipient.
“Most concerningly, the current whereabouts of the funds remains unclear,” she wrote. “This lack of transparency is unacceptable for a public institution entrusted with managing taxpayer dollars.”
The report does not accuse Chapinduka of beginning the withholding practice, noting that he did not work for the district at the time, and redacts information about who may have been responsible.
On Jan. 2 — his birthday — Chapinduka received notice that his employment would be terminated as a result of the Dec. 31 report, which he had not received. The Minnesota Reformer first reported that he, Diop and Gilbert were placed on leave that day.
On Jan. 5, Minneapolis Public Schools filed a police report, alleging nearly $3 million in wire fraud — the exact amount listed in the report. The police report provides scant detail and does not name any suspects. “Victim-Business reported suspected fraud,” reads the police officer’s writeup.
Asked about the police report Monday and whether the district was still pursuing criminal charges, Belcher said she could not comment on it specifically, but that the district had to follow certain reporting obligations. She stressed that since January, the district had confirmed all its wire transfers were legitimate district expenses.
“We do not have any information indicating that the money withheld from the trust was spent inappropriately or that it ever left district accounts,” she said.
In a statement Monday, Minneapolis Public Schools leaders praised the district’s processes.
“In this case, the district’s swift and appropriate response reflects the high standards we expect and demonstrates Minneapolis Public Schools delivering on its commitment to accountability, student well-being, and strong financial stewardship,” said school board chair Collin Beachy.
Marcia Howard, president of the teacher chapter of the Minneapolis Federation of Educators, said in an interview Monday that her union had been saying for years that “there’s something not right in the water” regarding the district’s finances, but she praised Sayles-Adams’ efforts at transparency.
“They saw that money was not moving correctly for about a period of 10 months, but they immediately upon finding that put all that money that was withheld, plus the interest that would have been made, back and addressed it,” she said.
‘I want to clear my name’
In an interview with Sahan Journal, Chapinduka said he had not received due process and did not understand why he had been fired.
“I am trying to make sense of it, and it just didn’t make sense for someone who just had started,” he said.
Chapinduka had previously worked for Minneapolis Public Schools from 2015 to 2019, and then returned to the district as executive director of finance on July 1, 2025. In August, he was called into a meeting. District officials wanted to know why 5% of the health funds were being withheld — a practice that had begun the previous November. That was the first Chapinduka had heard this practice was happening. He offered to look into it.
“I was just doing an investigation based on the requirements of the job,” he said. “So I don’t know why this escalated that quickly to that level and without any due process.”
If his explanations about withholding 5% from the health fund shifted, he said, it was because “I was trying to figure it out, just like everybody else.”
He declined to address who may have made the decision to withhold the money, and said he agreed the funds should never have been withheld.
“I can’t even speak to what happened or how decisions were made, because I wasn’t even part of it,” he said.
He said he believed the decision was motivated by a zeal in the finance department to maximize funds for the cash-strapped district. And he’s not sure how he wound up taking a large share of the blame. He was surprised to learn about a police report and said he had not been contacted by law enforcement.
He wondered if the district’s reaction was rooted in concern over the high-profile fraud cases in Minnesota. In December, President Donald Trump escalated attacks on the state’s Somali community following fraud charges in federal nutrition aid and state human services programs.
“I’m an immigrant, so when these things are going around, people start to just make their own assumptions,” said Chapinduka, who immigrated to the United States from Zimbabwe.
He said the district’s explanations about his termination had shifted over time and questioned whether the district’s “internal politics” played a role in his ouster.
After he was fired, he appealed his termination to the Minneapolis Civil Service Commission. But the commission informed him that his position was not covered by the civil service’s protections. He worries the termination and media attention will affect his career prospects.
“I want to clear my name,” he said. He said he had engaged legal counsel “since this was a clear wrong termination.”
‘Recurring pattern of insubordination’
It’s not clear from the records the district released what role the other two finance officials placed on leave may have played in the accounting maneuver.
Ibrahima Diop, who’d held financial leadership roles in the district since 2015, left the district Jan. 30. Belcher declined to clarify whether Diop was terminated or left voluntarily, citing privacy laws, but the Minnesota Reformer reported that he announced his exit in December. He’d accepted a new job in Milwaukee Public Schools as deputy superintendent of operations. But on Jan. 8, the Milwaukee district announced Diop would “no longer be coming,” after saying it was reviewing “new information.”
Minneapolis Public Schools provided termination records only for Chapinduka.
Aaron Gilbert, who has held senior accounting and finance roles at the district since 2023, is the only one of the three still employed by Minneapolis Public Schools.
In an August 28, 2025, final warning to Diop, provided by the district as part of the public records request, Sayles-Adams described a “recurring pattern of insubordination” in his failures to follow her directions.
She also pointed to other concerns: “ongoing issues such as your inability to provide accurate budget and costing information, failure to oversee high-liability areas, lack of preparedness, and repeated missed deadlines continue to place the District in a precarious position with reverberating impacts across the organization.”
Finally, Sayles-Adams noted a report that cited “poor morale, a lack of collaborative ethos, pervasive fear and uncertainty, and leadership gaps” in the finance department.
She warned that future violations could result in disciplinary action including termination.
Diop did not return Sahan Journal messages seeking comment.
Financial challenges continue
In a school board meeting Tuesday night, community members shared emotional testimony about the impact of $50 million in budget cuts to adult education, school counselors, library services and community liaisons.
Toby Eichten, a Roosevelt High School student, noted that the cumulative impact of budget cuts over the last three years totaled more than $200 million — more than a quarter of next year’s general operating budget. He questioned where he would send his children someday.
“What exactly are you going to leave behind for us, if anything?” he asked.
During that meeting, the board also reviewed the results of a long-delayed audit.
The audit did not specifically mention the accounting maneuver, but pointed to problems with segregation of accounting duties — effectively, inadequate checks and balances within the finance department.
Board members pressed the auditors on the weaknesses identified in the report.
“I think we all feel very motivated to make sure we are doing the very best in our financial division that we can,” said board member Joyner Emerick.
Board member Kim Ellison said she wanted to allocate budgetary resources so that Sayles-Adams could properly train and staff the finance department.
