Karima Manji fraudulently received the equivalent of 100,000 euros in benefits intended for Inuit. She was sentenced Thursday after pleading guilty to fraud in February.
“Ms. Manji victimized her own children…her own daughters who were seriously compromised by her crimes”said Mia Manocchio, a judge in Nunavut, Canada. The judge faced a case never before seen across the Atlantic: Karima Manji pleaded guilty to fraud in February after pretending her daughters were Inuit, which allowed her to collect more than 150,000 Canadian dollars (100,000 euros) in benefits for Inuit residents. She was sentenced on Thursday to three years in prison, which she will spend in a federal penitentiary.
According to facts reported by the British daily The Guardian, Karima Manji, a resident of Toronto, sent documents in 2016 for her two daughters, Amira and Nadya, in order to obtain an Inuit identity card. The Canadian, 59, did live in Iqaluit, the territory’s capital, in the 1990s but her two daughters were born in Ontario and have no connection with the Inuit or the lands of Nunavut.
The application had undergone extensive review by community members to avoid fraudulent registrations, and Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated (NTI) had approved the application. In the process, the two children, aged 18 at the time of the events, obtained money from the Kakivak association, described in court documents as “an organization serving the Inuit […] which provides sponsorship funds to Baffin Inuit for education-related expenses”.
Fraudulent mother returns 130,000 Canadian dollars
Thus, between September 2020 and March 2023, Nadya and Amira received CAD$158,254.05 in benefits from Nunavut organizations. Another CAD$64,413 was pending for Amira Gill in the spring of 2023, but was not paid. To date, the fraudulent mother has returned CAD$130,000 and still owes CAD$28,254 to the Kakivak association.
«[Cette affaire] must serve as a signal to any future Indigenous suitor that the false appropriation of Indigenous identity in a criminal context will result in significant sanction”said Mia Manocchio. Indeed, Canada faces from time to time fraudulent cases of citizens who claim to be of indigenous descent from the Natives. On the other hand, cases of fraud with the Inuit are much rarer.
Canada’s Inuit population, numbering about 70,000, lives primarily in the north of the country.
