Financial Transparency Coalition

The U.S. government is not unfamiliar with short-sighted policies, indeed short-sightedness in political systems often seems often more familiar than not. Yet of all the short-sighted policies the United States has engaged in, and especially of those overseas, the recent reports on ghost money in Afghanistan take the cake. I wish I could say I was surprised. According to a report by the New York Times, the Central Intelligence Agency has literally been dropping off “bags of cash” at Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s office for decades. Karzai called the amounts “small,” but evidence indicates the amounts are anything but—perhaps totaling tens...

The recent independent report on Kabul Bank scandal points out to the urgency to transform the country’s laws and institutions, from the financial sector to the justice system. The team that published the report are to be congratulated for shedding light on a “ponzi scheme” scandal that involves the theft of US$900 million.

LONDON - The first official analysis of the “Kabul Bank Crisis” of 2010 reveals an urgent need for reform in the international banking system, said Global Witness today. The “Report of the Public Inquiry into the Kabul Bank Crisis”, published today by Afghanistan’s Independent Joint Anti-Corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (MEC) shows how the perpetrators behind the fraud were able to repeatedly bypass the checks and balances of regulators, donors, auditors and international banks, and steal enough money to incur a bailout costing approximately 6 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP.

In this video, Integrity Watch Afghanistan monitors infrastructure projects in Afghanistan. They go out into the field through community monitoring to make sure that projects are done right, and aid money is well spent. At one point, they even directly confront contractors for shoddy work.