WASHINGTON — Afghan officials are thwarting U.S. efforts to protect American aid from being stolen or diverted to Taliban insurgents, a new report said Wednesday, specifically naming President Hamid Karzai as part of the problem.
U.S. government agencies in Kabul also came in for criticism for not working closely enough with one another to track U.S. cash flowing to Afghanistan.
Amid a growing financial scandal, and after billions in aid have been sent to his country, Karzai has banned U.S. Treasury officials who were working as advisers at the central bank, according to the report from the top U.S. auditor for reconstruction in the war-ravaged nation.
The Treasury advisers won’t return because working conditions at the bank have become too hostile, it said.
Raising a new alarm over a national banking scandal that has left Afghanistan in financial crisis, the report cites Karzai’s move as one of a number of ways in which his government has failed to cooperate with costly international efforts to improve the country’s financial sector.
“The United States has poured billions of aid dollars into a country plagued by corruption, insurgency and the narcotics trade,” acting Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction Herbert Richardson said in a statement accompanying his report. “It is essential that we use all tools available to ensure that U.S. dollars are protected from fraud and diversion to the insurgency.”
Among his recommendations is that Afghan banks and the U.S. should record the serial numbers of the huge bundles of cash that have been flowing into the country as part of a $70 billion American effort since 2002 to improve security and development there.
A spokesman for Karzai referred comment to the central bank.
Emal Ashor, a spokesman for the central bank, said he was not aware of any decision by Karzai to unilaterally ban all U.S. advisers from the bank.
Efforts to track and protect U.S. tax dollars and other international aid are entangled in a web of Afghan banking scandals that have been fast developing in recent weeks:
• The former head of the central bank, Abdul Qadir Fitrat, fled late last month to northern Virginia amid allegations of failing to act on warnings about widespread corruption at the nation’s largest private lender, Kabul Bank.
• Kabul Bank, formerly headed by a world- class poker player, nearly collapsed last year because of mismanagement and questionable lending practices. Top officers were not arrested until last month.
• In June, the International Monetary Fund stopped an expected $70 million reconstruction payment to Afghanistan to show displeasure of international donors, a move threatening billions in aid to a country reliant on foreign assistance.
