|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]
In 2022, the DA Afghanistan Bank showed off photos of $40 million in stacks of hundred dollar bills sitting on the tarmac at Kabul International Airport. The Taliban controlled central bank described this as one of three shipments of “humanitarian aid” amounting to over $100 million.
DAB, Afghanistan’s central bank, was headed by Noor Ahmad Agha, a “specially designated terrorist” who had been named as the “financier of bomb-making”, including the IEDs which had killed over 1,000 American soldiers, and sending money to a sanctioned figure was illegal.
Despite that someone had sent a massive fortune in U.S. cash to the Taliban’s terror bank.
While no international organization was willing to admit to the cash-smuggling operation, the ultimate responsibility lay with USAID. The $40 million on the tarmac was part of a much larger scheme under which USAID and the State Department provided over $1.7 billion in funding to the UN which then shipped $2.9 billion in cash to Afghanistan.
The cash had to be physically shipped because it was illegal for U.S. banks to provide it to the Taliban. USAID was helping finance an illegal operation to circumvent sanctions on terrorists.
When the State Department and USAID claimed that they “do not provide assistance to or through the Taliban” but work “with trusted international partners with extensive experience working in challenging environments like Afghanistan”, it was a half-truth at best.
The “trusted international partners” included the UN. USAID funded the UN which used an intermediary to purchase the hundred dollar bills from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where Afghanistan’s wealth, claimed by the Taliban, was being held, then contracted with a company, quite possiblyOsama bin Laden’s old airline, to fly it to Afghanistan, deposit it in banks, allocate it to NGOs and then use DAB to convert the dollars into local Afghan currency.
This Afghan currency was also provided by the United States which funded the printing of 20 billion in Taliban currency by European companies for which the dollars would be exchanged.
“The United States and our partners have been working hard with international banks to facilitate payment transfers from Afghanistan’s central bank to European printing companies,” State Department spokesman Ned Price had told reporters. “This will address one of the aspects of Afghanistan’s ongoing liquidity crisis, consistent with U.S. efforts to support basic human needs.”
Rather than just the ‘foreign aid’ to Afghanistan in the form of the ‘Afghanis’ that it was already arranging to print for the Taliban, the Biden administration sent dollars to them through the UN.
Under the guise of humanitarian needs, $1.7 billion was provided to the UN, which used some of the money to buy dollars to fly into Afghanistan, to trade for Afghan currency, which the U.S. had also arranged to have printed on behalf of the Taliban. The exchange left the Taliban’s DAB terrorist bank with large amounts of U.S. currency that it could auction off to its own allies.
The arrangement is even worse than it sounds because DAB artificially set the exchange rate of the Afghani to the dollar at a far higher rate than the black market exchange rate. And the Taliban bank used the auctions of the dollars to artificially prop up that exchange rate.
USAID’s money laundering scheme not only used the UN to send a fortune in dollars to the Taliban, it allowed their terrorist bank to run a ‘dollar cartel’, buying dollars from the UN through its NGOs at favorable rates and then covertly reselling the dollars back in Pakistan to its ‘dollar cartel’ at much better rates as its rupee struggles against the dollar.
During the intermediate step, DAB held ‘auctions’ of the dollars which elements linked to the Taliban, including the Haqqani network allied with Al Qaeda, reportedly ‘win’. The auctions prop up the Afghani currency and keep the Taliban in power. And the Taliban take their share at each step of the process, taxing all the various intermediaries before finally cashing out the money.
Sending dollars to Afghanistan only to exchange them for Afghanis which the United States was also arranging for served absolutely no purpose except to give the Taliban liquid currency, but was justified as a way to prop up the Afghani currency as a “humanitarian aid” measure.
The money laundering operation required multiple steps and plausible deniability for USAID, the State Department and the UN which insisted that “[n]one of the cash brought into Afghanistan is deposited in the Central Bank of Afghanistan nor provided to the Taliban de facto authorities by the UN.” To the extent this was true, it was because the money was deposited in a “private bank”, allocated to NGOs funded by the UN which then exchanged it with DBA’s assets.
USAID was able to claim plausible deniability because it was putting money into pooled UN accounts, which a report by the SIGAR Afghanistan War government watchdog revealed, “prevents tying humanitarian assistance expenses—including for the purchase and transport of cash into Afghanistan—to a specific donor’s contribution.
Putting the money into UN pooled accounts allowed USAID to claim that they “do not provide assistance to or through the Taliban”, they just put money into “pooled UN accounts” which they do not control, and “as a result, State and USAID do not know how much of their total contributions to the UN have been used to purchase cash for use in Afghanistan”.
The UN deposits the dollars into its accounts in a conveniently unnamed ‘private bank’ in Afghanistan. Its name is surely known to the Taliban authorities, but continues to be unknown to United States officials. From there the money is distributed to the bank accounts of the NGOs funded by the UN. At that point they are most likely converted into Afghanis with DAB’s aid since the supply of the Taliban currency is controlled by Afghanistan’s central bank.
That allows the UN to claim that “[n]one of the cash brought into Afghanistan is deposited in the Central Bank of Afghanistan nor provided to the Taliban de facto authorities by the UN.” The cash is not provided to the Taliban or DAB by the UN, but by the groups funded by the UN.
The SIGAR report noted that “a UN official told us that the UN’s liability ends when the recipient PIO and NGOs have the funds in their accounts.” The UN then disavows any liability for providing the money to the Taliban even as UN officials are well aware that it’s happening.
The State Department responded to these revelations by falsely claiming that there are no sanctions on Afghanistan, that banks refuse to carry out wire transfers because of “the lack of profitability” and that “to the best of our knowledge, no electronic financial delivery systems are currently scalable to meet the liquidity needs of the UN” requiring it to instead convert billions of dollars into paper notes and ship them by plane. None of this is true or even a plausible lie.
USAID declined to reply to the government watchdog’s report.
The Taliban money laundering scheme was not an exception, it was how USAID, the State Department and the UN have operated for too long, not only in Afghanistan, but in Syria, Yemen, Gaza and many other terrorist areas around the world, using plausible deniability and chains of organizations to avoid accountability and direct responsibility for aiding terrorists.
Americans have become the financiers of their worst enemies. It’s time for that to stop.
This crap makes my blood boil. And NO ONE will go to jail for it. Beyond pathetic…
Not necessarily. AG Bondi is having USAID personnel investigated. Make that former or soon to be former personnel.
Think I am falling in love with Pam Bondi.
A.G. .Bondi is like the Coral Snake who is beautiful,but whose bite is deadly.We miss her here in Florida.
I will believe that when the Deep State screams “National Security!” and Bondi forges ahead anyway.
Pray for her and every honest soul in her sphere!!
You’re confusing the Bush 41 & 43 administrations with this one.
Normally, every conservative here would agree with you as history has shown us. (So, I can’t blame your cynicism.)
These are new times.
100K useless burocrats have already taken the buy-out and quit. The dumber ones are refusing and getting fired instead, like Samantha Powers.
A.G. Bondi has now sued that corrupt POS Letita James.
That’s the beginning of more to come.
Trump learned from his mistakes. (No back-stabbers like Fauci this time.)
The high-octane team Trump has assembled are opening the books & taking resolved action.
As such, leftist burocrats are panicking, and for good reason. They know what the future holds & this time it won’t be Bush shrugging off “a prank or two”.
This time it’s serious.
Everything you say is true, and that’s why I still fear for Trump’s safety. These little bureaucrats are only the middlemen, while the serious players remain untouched. My prayers for Pam Bondi and others in the middle of this mess, may God protect them.
God grant they all are prosecuted and sent to GITMO
You blaming this on Bush??
This bizarre though well-known mode of operation whereby the US pays extortion to our enemies begs the question as to why they would do such a thing.. Let me suggest here that the entities that participated in this scheme profited from their activities whether in the form of kick-backs or payment for services rendered. Since punishment for these acts would never be meted out, it was a n0=brainer. No risk, all gain. The idea of “no-risk” is the culprit. The true criminals are anyone who reduced risk to illegal activity. We will see things turn around in the US when the first set of people go to jail or are backrupted by legal fees.
You’re right. Just yesterday Elon Musk and President Trump held a press conference in the Oval Office and Musk told the media trolls that kickbacks to USAID criminals was a very real thing.
I like the way Trump doesn’t even leave his office for press conferences because he’s busy working for ordinary Americans and cant’t be bothered with attending an outside conference except under special circumstances.
It is motivating to see hardened resolve, rather than supplicant caving by Bush.
Bush43 once teased the idea off withholding foreign aid from hostile nations. That’s as far as his resolve ever went. (Foreign aid increased)
Conservatives put up with the RNC establishment by voting for their lackluster candidates: Bush41, Dole, crying Boehner, Bush43, Arlin Spencer, etc.
Did Bush41 & 43, Jeb, Laura, and Barbara reward our loyalty by supporting Trump?
Hell, no!
They ALL voting for Hillary (or wrote-in Conde).
Also; the Bush clan saw our support when Gore attempted to steal the 2000 election. (I sent him $20)
Yet, in our time of need in 2020, we saw the Bush clan give us the finger.
That was the only resolve Bush showed – vindictive retribution because Jeb lost in the primaries.
Thumbs down only because Jeb Bush was governor of Florida and the election hung in the balance with Florida – I wonder if we would have had 9-11-01 if Gore did win.
I met Al Gore and he seemed more like a business man that a politician – so what happens, Gore gets the 2000 election stolen and he goes off the farm and makes hundreds of millions with global warming – a complete unscientific joke and Gore never enters politics again.
Al gore is a liberal retard and sold out America.
He is also a liar told us back in 1985 that global warming was going to melt the ice caps and Miami and New York city would be under water by 2015 well its 2025 and all is well.
I live in Tennessee and al was a train wreck for us .
Gore told us there would be no more fish in the sea by 2000 because of acid rain. How can he live with himself without apologizing to the world?
You are sooooooooowrong about W.
I love the way Trump multitasks in the oval office, too! He is all substance, and yet he is great at showmanship. A true statesman.
Not necessarily.
While the recipients of USAID are likely doing it for the money,
State Department employees often do it for ideology.
They hate our guts.
Some consulates are so bad …
… they’re run by terrorist organizations.
Drain the State Department.
No doubt it is driven by ideology but that doesn’t mean a backwash of cash isn’t part of the deal. What I’d like the DOGE team to discover next is a Swiss bank account worth $100M owned by Samantha Powers. And that’s just for starters.
Oh, the POS probably has illegal gain of that amount of money, but unfortunately, it will never be uncovered unless one of her underlings rats hr out!
The Wretched Department of State is an active enemy against American freedom, and independence.Communism/Globalists best friend!
and who should get bankrupted? that’s a dimocrap tactic. get the criminals!
And 10% for all the big (Democrat Party) guys
18 U.S.C. § 653 – U.S. Code – Unannotated Title 18. Crimes and Criminal Procedure § 653. Disbursing officer misusing public funds
Whoever, being a disbursing officer of the United States, or any department or agency thereof, or a person acting as such, in any manner converts to his own use, or loans with or without interest, or deposits in any place or in any manner, except as authorized by law, any public money intrusted to him; or, for any purpose not prescribed by law, withdraws from the Treasury or any authorized depositary, or transfers, or applies, any portion of the public money intrusted to him, is guilty of embezzlement of the money so converted, loaned, deposited, withdrawn, transferred, or applied, and shall be fined under this title or not more than the amount embezzled, whichever is greater, or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; but if the amount embezzled is $1,000 or less, he shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.
Time to apply the law against these venal, perfidious criminals.
Yes, but good luck with that in the corrupt, paid for DC courts and 96+% committed far left Democrat jury pool.
USAID properly described.
USAID is the Enemy of America and USAID supporters and Financers are Public Enemies #1
USAID is only the tip of the iceberg.
I saw an interview with a person on “X” who goes by “datarepublican”. She has been delving into the USAID scandal and beyond. She was specifically asked how broad this waste, fraud and corruption is and she, too, replied USAID was a tiny tip of the iceberg. One thing she said she found was there has been a shadow govt set up that operates independently of our laws and Constitution with no accountability to anyone. What she has uncovered, so far, is how they steal money from legitimate operations to finance themselves. Two names she revealed as being in the thick of it was Lindsay Graham Bill Crystal and Samantha Powers. and to make matters worse, she said she has barely scraped the surface.
“USAID and the State Department provided over $1.7 billion in funding to the UN”
Plus there’s all the “open” donations in foreign aid.
There are no longer any foreign nations that deserve or need western aid and the only reason they are in alleged poverty is because of corruption.
The good news is that AG Bondi is having those USAID criminals investigated and you can bet there will be indictments and prosecutions.
Tulsi Gabbard just made it through the nomination process despite the lone RINO vote against her by Bitch McCornhole, the chinless Kentucky sewer turtle. That doddering and senile old traitor needs to be forcibly retired. He can’t even walk without somebody holding him up. I’ve seen video of that.
RFK Jr. and Kash POatel aren’t far behind, despite D-Bag attempts to drag out the confirmation to 30 hours – in short bursts, to drag it out even longer. Anti American trash.
Once Patel joins Bondi in office, I figure we’ll see some real action. They mean to purge the FBI too, you know. All that bullshit about the sterling “rank and file” is just that, bullshit. Up to 65% of those people were hired after Brokeback Hasbeen Obama lowered hiring standards and used a D-Bag political litmus as a hiring standard. President Trump has said more than once that many of them are gouing to be fired for their proved corruption.
I can’t wait for the criminal agents who raided Mar a Lago and planted fake evidence and bugs to take it up their treasonous asses. I guess you shouldn’t have sniffed Melania’s panties, eh, you degenerate perverts?
Patel’s confirmation is vital if anything meaningful is going to be done with the FBI and treasonous agents who “were only following orders ” The Nuremberg principle must apply.
But I can’t see how there can be any convictions in the corrupt 100% Democrat/Socialist DC court system and with a jury pool of 96+% of rabid Democrat aparatchiks. Corrupt judges have gotten away scot free with rank conflicts of interest and un-American and illegal acts of jurisprudence in DC.
Totally agree with you but until Kash can do a total “housecleaning” at the FBI I expect there are more than enough traitorous FBI agents to leak the names of those under investigation by the DOJ. They did it to Homan over pending raids and that’s small potatoes compared to how deep and wide the shit Samantha Powers and her team of thieves have been up to.
I would love to see Powers be a captive love interest for Tren De Aragua and let her enjoy what she has enabled.
Fun with AI:
Query: Provide one paragraph on how AI could theoretically be used to create a RICO case against a US Gov’t agency if true fraud, waste and abuse are discoverable.
Google AI Response: Theoretically, AI could be used to build a RICO case against a US government agency by systematically identifying and linking instances of fraud, waste, and abuse across the agency’s systems. AI algorithms could analyze financial records, communication logs, employee data, and contract information to uncover patterns of racketeering activity, such as bribery, kickbacks, or embezzlement. By establishing connections between individual acts, demonstrating a pattern of illegal behavior, and identifying the individuals involved in the conspiracy, the AI could provide prosecutors with the evidence needed to demonstrate that the agency, or a part of it, functions as a criminal enterprise. This evidence, compiled and presented by AI, could then be used to build a case showing how individuals within the agency participated in the conduct of the enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering, thus satisfying the requirements for a RICO prosecution.
Samantha Power first please!
Let the games begin! I would think the DOGE team has already done this and continues to do so as they run up against things that may not seem related to the primary query. One can only hope all these shysters are getting cold chills down their backs wondering if they CYA’d themselves enough to outwit “the machines”..
Daniel: The hubby and I just yesterday, were thinking. “What’s going on with Radcliffe, over at CIA.” Been awfully quiet over there. Much of this USAID monies, reeks of CIA. I think we’ll find, they have their hands all over this. For many years, under several administrations, no less.
Thank you for some fine reporting.
……Because I always leave bags of money in a ratty-ass apartment building pretending to be a bank.
No but you pretend to be a Christian.
Imagine the families of the hundreds of Americans killed in action in Afghanistan reading this article. Imagine knowing that your precious son in dead and gone, his killers enriched by our tax dollars, and the money was sent to the enemy by your own corrupt countrymen.
Sad image indeed. Sadder still when you consider that the Taliban was a CIA creation and Bin Laden was a CIA stooge, and that the 20-year war was arguably a questionable one at best.
It was no war. If the US wanted to go to war against Afghanistan we would be speaking about it in the past tense. Afghanistan, like so many other places, was a retail outlet for the military industrial complex. The CIA, a wholly owned subsidiary of said complex, sets the stage, stirs the pot and then provides the made-up reasons for arming both sides. The “dupes” fight it out with just enough weapons to keep either side from prevailing. As we have seen, this can drag out for decades guaranteeing a steady income for the arms makers and everyone who works for them. That’s the way I see it, anyway. I could be totally wrong but this same scenario has been going on since Korea and none of it ever ends in “victory”. (I probably just got myself on some CIA “watch list” with this comment.)
WE NEED NAMES, LOTS AND LOTS OF NAMES SO WE CAN DENOUNCE THEM AND CHARGE THEM WITH SEDITION AND TREASON AGAINST THESE UNITED STATES.
We didn’t give foreign aid to the North Vietnamese, Pathet Lao and Khmer Rouge after we withdrew from Indo China in 1975.. Or North Korea after the 1953 armistice. This is criminal!
We are now living in the age of “never let a serious crisis go to waste”. DOGE is uncovering how the traitorous grifters have capitalized on Rahm’s infamous statement.
Exactly. The interesting thing from the macroeconomic/political point of view is how the gigantic pool of money created by the tax system attracted the criminal element. Every time there was a crisis that caused the government to expand and increase taxes, after the crisis ended the tax system remained and the pool of money grew larger.
“Americans have become the financiers of their worst enemies. ”
… anyone surprised?
Remember – no disaster relief for Americans,
but illegal invaders get hotels and free flights,
and foreign enemies get bailouts.
Still think Democrats don’t hate you?!
It’s too bad nobody sent me bags of hundred dollar bills. hmmm.
.
As to Bondi, I’m not convinced. She is on record supporting Red Flag laws. Not good.