Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Top officials in the Afghanistan government are helping funnel billions of dollars out of the country, say U.S. investigators. Members of the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration sent to Afghanistan estimate that more than $3 billion in cash has been “openly flown out of Kabul International Airport in the past three years,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
American investigators believe some of the diverted funds have been stolen from U.S and European aid programs, while the rest of the cash is drug money derived from Afghanistan’s opium and heroin trade.
“It’s not like they grow money on trees here,” a U.S. official investigating corruption and Taliban financing told The Wall Street Journal. “A lot of this looks like our tax dollars being stolen. And opium, of course.”
But attempts to link the corruption activities back to key members of President Hamid Karzai’s government have been stymied. Those implicated in the schemes include Vice President Mohammed Fahim and one of the president’s older brothers, Mahmoud Karzai.
The Washington Post reports that “Afghan prosecutors and investigators have been ordered to cross names off case files, prevent senior officials from being placed under arrest and disregard evidence against executives of a major financial firm suspected of helping the nation’s elite move millions of dollars overseas.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Corruption Suspected in Airlift of Billions in Cash From Kabul (by Matthew Rosenberg, Wall Street Journal)
U.S. Officials Say Karzai Aides Are Derailing Corruption Cases Involving Elite (by Greg Miller and Ernesto Londoño, Washington Post)
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