Kane County Reporter

At least 72 companies that were given Business Interruption grants had already been labeled by the state as “dissolved.”

Records reveal that at least $1.1 million in COVID-19 relief funds were granted to these businesses by the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.

State Sen. Don Dewitte said that “If legislators, who know their districts best, would have been given access to the applicants applying for these grants (our requests were denied), perhaps we could have flushed out some of these bad actors before the Pritzker administration issued checks to businesses either out of business or simply nonexistent.”

Applications should have only been accepted from businesses that were open on March 1, 2020, and would try to remain open the entire year.

“The information was always deemed 'proprietary and confidential' and we were never given an explanation as to why. These are public funds — your tax dollars!” Dewitte added on his Facebook post.

It was also required that the grant should be “exclusively for costs and losses incurred due to the business interruption” caused by COVID-19.

According to WCIA, five of the businesses that received funding dissolved in the 1990s and one of them dissolved in 1987.