Afghan Banking secrets, USAID laxness, corruption, inept!

Editorial Note - Classified, no it isn’t, yes it is, no its not, well maybe kinda sorta. A report on the activities of the Kabul Bank force that question:

An eye-opening report on corruption in the Afghan Central Bank that was issued last March by the Inspector General of the U.S. Agency for International Development was recently removed from the USAID web site after the Agency decided to classify some of its published contents.

The now-classified IG report focused on the failure to discover a widespread pattern of fraudulent loans at the Kabul Bank which led to the diversion of $850 million, the near collapse in 2009 of the bank, and an ensuing national crisis.

Meanwhile, our USAID is a kind and generous NGO spending taxpayers money for all kinds of reasons. In Kapisa Province, Afghanistan our money went to aid even more Afghans:

Approximately three weeks after an indiscriminate rocket attack killed 53 civilians in Kapisa province, USAID joined the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) to offer condolences to the victims’ families and provide much-needed humanitarian assistance. The U.S. Government provided food, warm clothing, and heaters following a December 10 shura, or community gathering, during which the dead were mourned and provincial officials and religious leaders expressed solidarity with the community.

But, USAID inadvertently funneled money to terrorists as well. A recent report shows that it was clearly illegal but none-the-less, despite deciding to add further vetting steps, the money ended up here:

In a report entitled “Audit of the Adequacy of USAID’s Antiterrorism Vetting Procedures,” dated November 6 and obtained by Fox News, U.S. Agency for International Development Inspector General Donald A. Gambatesa concluded USAID’s “policies, procedures, and controls are not adequate to reasonably ensure against providing assistance to terrorists.”

…The agency added that its new “Partner Vetting System” — designed to avoid problems like those described in the report — was proposed prior to the release of the inspector general’s report.

 

Deloitte knew of the Kabul bank crisis and kept it close to the vest. Transparent versus opaque, honesty versus plausible deniability, a lie or just a state of mind.

USAID Classifies Kabul Bank Corruption Report…Too Late

AllGov.com

By Noel Brinkerhoff

Abdul Qadir Fitrat, the governor of Afghanistan’s central bank holds up a certificate to journalists as he briefs them in April on the Kabulbank crisis during a press conference in Kabul. (Photo credit: S. Sabawoon / EPA file)

Less than two months after it was released to the public, a report on corruption in Afghanistan’s Central Bank has been retroactively classified by the inspector general of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

The now-secret report raised the question of why the Deloitte accounting firm, which was hired to advise bank officials, did not discover a widespread pattern of fraudulent loans at the Kabul Bank which led to the diversion of $850 million. The corruption nearly caused the bank to collapse and risked a national crisis.

The USAID inspector general said the original report was written using non-classified material. But since then two documents cited in the report were deemed secret, resulting in the classification of the entire report.

Although the report may be classified, it is still easy to find on the Internet.

The inspector general’s action may not be legal under federal law. Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy, wrote on his blog: “Unclassified information that has been formally released and is no longer under U.S. government control is supposed to be beyond the reach of the classification system altogether.”

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