Afghan officials smuggled $1,000,000,000 out before Taliban takeover as Biden poured in billions more
BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Business Insider has exposed the level of corruption in the U.S.-backed Afghanistan government. Among the biggest questions that arise is this: How much money did Afghan President Ashraf Ghani leave with, and how much hard-earned American taxpayer cash was among the money that was smuggled out of the country?
Consider the fact that Ghani met with Biden in June 2021, less than eight weeks before Ghani fled the capital amid the collapse of the US-backed government. Although it’s a mystery what Ghani left with, information points to him being a beneficiary of the smuggled assets.
Even as the collapse loomed, the Biden administration continued to pour billions of dollars into Ghani’s government and boasted about the US-Afghan relationship. The investigation into the Afghan corruption points to full knowledge on Biden’s part. So who will now continue this investigation, not only into Ghani (which lead to death threats to the investigator), but particularly into Biden’s knowledge and possible complicity? Not only have large amounts of American cash been lost in Afghanistan, but billions of dollars worth of weaponry was also left behind.
Shocking levels of corruption keep on getting exposed in the Biden administration, which includes the loss of staggering amounts of cash in Afghanistan, cash that could have been used to turn around the American economy. Instead, Biden is keeping the Southern border open, only adding to the financial burden of American citizens, as well as inevitable security costs related to the criminal element that is entering the country.
Biden has now pledged “unlimited” spending to Ukraine. Clearly, he thinks America has unlimited financial reserves. What about American interests?
“Exclusive: Afghan government officials helped smugglers sneak almost $1 billion in cash and gold out of Afghanistan as the US-backed government neared collapse, documents show,” by Mattathias Schwartz and Edris Lutfi, Business Insider, December 20, 2022:
During the final months of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, as the Taliban advanced on the capital, the elected government struggled to reassure its US patrons that it could maintain control. Yet at the same time, smugglers were illegally carrying hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold out of the country with the assistance of officials from within the Afghan government, according to internal government documents and former Afghan officials.
The office of Ashraf Ghani, the US-backed Afghan president, had been informed about the problem, insiders say. But it did nothing to stop it.
Documents assembled by Afghanistan’s now-defunct government and obtained by Insider show that $59.7 million in cash and gold went from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan through the port of Hairatan during the first three months of 2021, as the US contemplated withdrawing its forces and the Taliban geared up for the spring offensive that eventually toppled Kabul. During a 13-month period running from May 2019 through May 2020, the total was a staggering $824 million.
Though the couriers failed to declare the money to Afghan officials as it left the country, Uzbek customs agents on the other side of the border did record the cash and gold on handwritten customs forms. Those records were obtained by Afghan anti-corruption officials as part of an investigation into money smuggling, and they form the basis of a scathing report documenting a river of cash flowing out of the impoverished nation.
Much of the money, the Uzbek customs forms show, was bound for the United Arab Emirates, where top Afghan officials would flee when their government collapsed later that year.
Gold and cash totaling four percent of Afghanistan’s GDP was smuggled through one border crossing
Situated on a river with one bridge crossing, Hairatan is the highest-volume customs port in Afghanistan. Insider obtained 457 pages of customs records showing that more than $824 million in cash and gold illegally crossed the border there during the second half of 2019 and the first half of 2020 — roughly four percent of Afghanistan’s GDP and more than the total amount of humanitarian assistance that the US government was providing to the country each year. In early 2021, as the new US administration was evaluating a sped-up withdrawal plan, between $500,000 and $1 million was passing through each day, the documents show.The smuggling flouted Afghan laws requiring travelers to declare cash or gold worth $10,000 or more and a strict ban on exporting $20,000 or more. The Uzbek customs forms don’t specify who the money belonged to or how the smugglers obtained it, but such a large and illicit flight of capital out of the country was one of many warning signs that the Afghan government’s survival could be in jeopardy.
The documents accuse Mirza Mohammad Katawazai, the former deputy speaker of Afghanistan’s parliament, of directing the smuggling ring with the help of a network of Afghan intelligence officials, border guards, and port officials. (Katawazai has denied previous allegations of smuggling ties.) They also accuse Ata Mohammad Noor, the former governor of Balkh province, where Hairatan is located, of providing security for the smugglers and issuing threats to potential competition. The documents identify the two men as being part of the 2021 smuggling ring; they do not allege who was behind the $824 million smuggled in 2019 and 2020….
American officials spent the first months of 2021 publicly extolling the durability of Ghani’s government, which would collapse almost immediately upon the US exit in August. But in private, they were airing serious concerns about corruption. On March 31, 2021, diplomats from the US Embassy in Kabul met with an Afghan government delegation that included members of the team investigating the Hairatan smuggling. According to notes of the meeting obtained by Insider, the Americans told their Afghan counterparts that corruption could only be stopped “if there is will” and expressed concerns about corruption “at the inner circle of the President.”
Meanwhile, the Biden administration continued to pour billions of dollars into Ghani’s government and spoke publicly about an enduring US-Afghanistan partnership. Even after Biden announced in April 2021 that the US military would leave the country by September, the official US plan was to continue funding Ghani’s government, having already spent $2.3 trillion on the war and $145 billion on reconstruction….
Those in Ghani’s inner circle appear to have prospered during their time in power. In June, the Wall Street Journal reported that the former president’s ministers have been snapping up rental properties in California and villas in the UAE, where the bulk of the smuggled money was headed. The UAE is also the home of Ghani and Noor, the former provincial governor with alleged ties to the Hairatan smuggling ring.