Another day in Afghanistan, another day spent supporting the wrong side by NATO
Afghanistan's largest private bank, Kabul Bank, run with the help of American advisors, was long promoted to Afghans (many of whom had never come across a bank before) by American officials as a safe, modern place to store one's savings. Instead the bank has now been found to have been a front to smuggle depositor's money out of the country and pay for the lavish lifestyles of a clique tied to President Hamid Karzai's government, including Karzai's brother.
Kabul Bank 'diverted £540 million to group of 12 in massive fraud'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...ive-fraud.htmlAfghanistan's biggest private bank was a massive fraud scheme from its founding, with £540 million ($861 million) diverted to a clique of beneficiaries including the president's brother, a British-funded audit has found.
Audit Says Kabul Bank Began as ‘Ponzi Scheme’
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/27/wo...pagewanted=allKABUL, Afghanistan — Kabul Bank became Afghanistan’s largest financial institution by offering the promise of modern banking to people who had never had a saving or checking account. What it really dealt in was modern theft: “From its very beginning,” according to a confidential forensic audit of Kabul Bank, “the bank was a well-concealed Ponzi scheme.”
Afghan and American officials had for years promoted Kabul Bank as a prime example of how Western-style banking was transforming a war-ravaged economy. But the audit, prepared this year for Afghanistan’s central bank by the Kroll investigative firm, gives new details of how the bank instead was institutionalizing fraud that reached into the hundreds of millions of dollars and obliterated Afghans’ trust after regulators finally seized the bank in August 2010 and the theft was revealed.
Going further than previous reports, the audit asserts that Kabul Bank had little reason to exist other than to allow a narrow clique tied to President Hamid Karzai’s government to siphon riches from depositors, who were the bank’s only substantial source of revenue.
Nearly $900M Kabul Bank fraud reportedly included smuggling money out on airline food trays
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/11...#ixzz2DYj2dvjlHundreds of millions of dollars from Kabul Bank were spirited out of Afghanistan -- some smuggled in airline food trays -- to bank accounts in more than two dozen countries, according to an independent review released on Wednesday about massive fraud that led to the collapse of the nation's largest financial institution.
The Karzai government steals from the poor, are war profiteers, rig elections and couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag without billions in aid and hundreds of thousands of Western troops.
Give Afghan to the Afghans, not corrupt capitalist cronies. The Taleban, who rightfully ruled Afghanistan before the invasion, and who by surviving and growing despite 11 years of bombardment by the world's mightiest military powers have proven themselves to be a true grassroots movement, deserve their victory.
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? Yes. Have we shown the inability to deal with him? Yes. But he isn't an idiot. He has insulated himself to the point he is untouchable by anything other than a bullet. Which if we were a country like Russia, we'd have employed by now.
Originally Posted by mrmouth
