[ad_1]
Washington:
Former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani nearly definitely didn’t flee Kabul because it fell to the Taliban with thousands and thousands of {dollars} in stolen money, a US authorities watchdog’s report stated Monday.
The Particular Inspector Normal for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) report, which can be printed on Tuesday, is an interim doc, because the workplace continues to be awaiting solutions to questions despatched to Ghani.
First reported on by Politico, it interviews witnesses in addition to officers who had been within the helicopter convoy with Ghani as they rapidly fled the Presidential Palace in Kabul whereas the Taliban marched into the capital on August 15, 2021.
In subsequent days, a number of experiences steered that Ghani and the opposite officers took as much as $169 million in Afghan authorities cash with them. Ghani has at all times fiercely denied these claims.
“Though SIGAR discovered that some money was taken from the grounds of the palace and loaded onto these helicopters, proof signifies that this quantity didn’t exceed $1 million and should have been nearer in worth to $500,000,” the report states.
It based mostly that evaluation closely on interviews with the witnesses and officers concerned, all of whom stated they noticed no indicators of such massive quantities of money on the helicopters already overloaded with folks fleeing for his or her lives.
“$169 million in hundred greenback payments, stacked finish to finish, would type a block 7.5 ft (2.3 meters) lengthy, 3 ft vast, and three ft tall… This block would have weighed 3,722 kilos, or almost two tons,” SIGAR famous, including that witnesses reported “minimal baggage” on the helicopters, which had no cargo holds.
As a substitute one official carried round $200,000, one other carried some $240,000 and others had “$5,000 to $10,000 of their pockets… Nobody had thousands and thousands,” one former senior official advised SIGAR.
“If true, this places the overall amount of money on board the three helicopters at roughly $500,000, with $440,000 belonging to the Afghan authorities,” the report stated.
“SIGAR additionally recognized suspicious circumstances wherein roughly $5 million in money was allegedly left behind on the presidential palace,” the report added.
It was not clear the place the cash got here from or what it was for, “however it was supposedly divided by members of the Presidential Protecting Service after the helicopters departed however earlier than the Taliban captured the palace,” it stated.
The report stated there seems to have been “ample alternative and energy to plunder Afghan authorities coffers.”
However, the watchdog added, it “doesn’t have enough proof to find out with certainty whether or not lots of of thousands and thousands of {dollars} had been faraway from the nation by Afghan officers as the federal government collapsed or whether or not any stolen cash was supplied by america.”
(Aside from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is printed from a syndicated feed.)
[ad_2]
Source link