Detroit, Mich. — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will not pardon Fay Beydoun, the Metro Detroit businesswoman and onetime Whitmer appointee charged over the use of a $20 million state grant, the governor’s office said.
Whitmer’s office said the governor wants the attorney general to focus on getting the money back. An attorney for Beydoun said she never sought a pardon.
A pardon may not be possible anyway. Michigan’s constitution lets a governor issue pardons only after a conviction, and Beydoun has not been convicted.
Beydoun, 62, of Farmington Hills, went before a judge in her hometown’s 47th District Court on Friday, Nov. 13, to answer three new felony counts, the Michigan Attorney General’s office said. She already faced 16 felonies filed in May.
The new counts accuse her of moving $500,000 from her nonprofit, Global Link International, in July 2025 to pay for her criminal defense; spending $100,000 of its money on a Michigan Founders Fund membership in August 2023; and putting more than $10,000 toward pricey furniture in July 2023. Two are larceny from a person counts carrying up to 10 years each, and one is larceny by conversion, a five-year felony.
The Michigan Economic Development Corporation oversaw the grant, which was supposed to fund a global business accelerator in Oakland County. Beydoun sat on that agency’s executive committee when the money was secured. Prosecutors allege no business moved to Michigan through the effort.
The economic development agency ended the grant in March 2025, and that September state prosecutors locked up more than $6.3 million sitting in linked bank accounts. A preliminary exam once set for January has been pushed back so her lawyers can review the new counts, and the case will continue under Attorney General-elect Eli Savit.
A criminal charge is only an allegation. Beydoun is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.
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