Karzai’s office gets bags full of CIA cash: US media
Karzai admits receiving cash, says it was used for 'good purposes' in Afghanistan.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tens of millions of U.S. dollars in cash were delivered by the CIA in suitcases, backpacks and plastic shopping bags to the office of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai for more than a decade, according to the New York Times, citing current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.
The so-called "ghost money" was meant to buy influence for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) but instead fuelled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington s exit strategy from Afghanistan, the newspaper quoted U.S. officials as saying.
"The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan", one American official said, "was the United States."
The CIA declined to comment on the report and the U.S. State Department did not immediately comment. The New York Times did not publish any comment from Karzai or his office.
"We called it ghost money ," Khalil Roman, who served as Karzai s chief of staff from 2002 until 2005, told the New York Times. "It came in secret and it left in secret."
For more than a decade the cash was dropped off every month or so at the Afghan president s office, the newspaper said.
Handing out cash has been standard procedure for the CIA in Afghanistan since the start of the war.
The cash payments to the president s office do not appear to be subject to oversight and restrictions placed on official American aid to the country or the CIA s formal assistance programmes, like financing Afghan intelligence agencies, and do not appear to violate U.S. laws, said the New York Times.
There was no evidence that Karzai personally received any of the money, Afghan officials told the newspaper. The cash was handled by his National Security Council, it added.
U.S. and Afghan officials familiar with the payments were quoted as saying that the main goal in providing the cash was to maintain access to Karzai and his inner circle and to guarantee the CIA s influence at the presidential palace, which wields tremendous power in Afghanistan s highly centralized government.
Much of the money went to warlords and politicians, many with ties to the drug trade and in some cases the Taliban, the New York Times said. U.S. and Afghan officials were quoted as saying the CIA supported the same patronage networks that U.S. diplomats and law enforcement agents struggled to dismantle, leaving the government in the grip of organised crime.
In 2010, Karzai said his office received cash in bags from Iran, but that it was a transparent form of aid that helped cover expenses at the presidential palace.
He said at the time that the United States made similar payments.Afghan President Hamid Karzai confirmed Monday that his office has received money from the US Central Intelligence Agency over the past decade, with wads of cash reportedly handed over in suitcases and backpacks.
Karzai thanked the US spy agency for what he said was money well spent just hours after The New York Times reported that Karzai s office received tens of millions of dollars in cash in a CIA effort to win influence.
"Yes, the NSC of Afghanistan has received money from CIA in the past 10 years. The amount was not big, rather it was small," Karzai said in a statement, referring to the National Security Council which is part of his office.
Karzai said the money had been used for good causes in Afghanistan, where endemic corruption has undermined efforts to establish a stable state, more than 11 years after the US-led invasion to dislodge the Taliban.
"The money was spent for different reasons: operation objectives, helping wounded and sick (people) and for house rents and others objectives," the president said, without giving further details.
There appeared to be no oversight of the secret CIA money, which was aimed at gaining influence by paying off warlords and politicians including some linked to the drug trade and even the Taliban, the Times reported.
