“Ghost Money”, lost anti-terror funding, and the Saudis

Editor’s Note – Its all in the funding, the “bad, the lost, and the ‘friends’” (or should that be the ugly?)… corruption, ineptness, and our ‘friends’ the Saudis.

Apparently losing money in Afghanistan or on terror fighting is not just a problem America has alone. Below is the report on millions in ‘Ghost Money’ paid to Hamid Karzai’s office, and also that of Canada’s lost anti-terror funding, and Hillary Clinton reportedly naming the Saudis as a source of terror funding of the opponents to all the efforts to stop terrorism.

THE BAD

Millions in CIA “ghost money” paid to Afghan president’s office: New York Times

By Reuters, Cross-posted at Yahoo

(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 programs, 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 organized 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.

The latest New York Times report said much of the Iranian cash, like the CIA money, went to pay warlords and politicians.For most of Karzai’s 11-year reign, there has been little interest in anti-corruption in the army or police. The country’s two most powerful institutions receive billions of dollars from donors annually but struggle just to recruit and maintain a force bled by high rates of desertion.

(Additional reporting by Alistair Bell and Sarah Lynch in Washington; Writing by Michael Perry; Editing by Mark Bendeich)

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THE LOST

Canada can’t account for $3.1B in anti-terror funding, AG finds

Lack of information on program spending a theme of auditor general’s spring report

By Meagan Fitzpatrick, CBC News

The federal government needs to do better at tracking and evaluating some of its program spending to ensure taxpayer dollars are being well-spent, Auditor General Michael Ferguson found in his spring report released today, and one of the most striking examples is that it can’t account for $3.1 billion in anti-terrorism funding.

The lack of information on spending and on results achieved for money spent is a common theme throughout Ferguson’s report, which includes 11 chapters in total.

In his audit of the Public Security and Anti-Terrorism (PSAT) Initiative, Ferguson suggested there should have been a government-wide review of spending by 35 departments and of the results for the program that was funded between 2001 and 2009.

He found that departments reported spending $9.8 billion of the $12.9 billion allocated for security and anti-terrorism measures under the program but he couldn’t determine where the other $3.1 billion went. The Treasury Board had no clear answers for him.

Ferguson said he’s not concerned the money is missing, it’s the information about it that can’t be nailed down. “It’s a matter of missing that last link in putting that information together,” he said at a news conference in Ottawa Tuesday morning.

If the money was reallocated from the anti-terrorism program to another program, there should have been approval for that, he added.

“We don’t have enough information to say whether that happened,” he said. The NDP jumped on the accounting gap as a sign the Conservatives can’t manage the public purse.

“It is really scandalous that [the government] can’t account for the $3.1 billion,” NDP MP Malcolm Allen said. NDP Leader Tom Mulcair called the unaccounted for money a “$3-billion boondoggle.”

Read more here at CBC News.

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THE ‘FRIENDS’

US embassy cables: Hillary Clinton says Saudi Arabia ‘a critical source of terrorist funding’

From the UK Guardian

WikiLeaks cables portray Saudi Arabia as a cash machine for terrorists

By Declan Walsh in Islamabad

Hillary Clinton memo highlights Gulf states’ failure to block funding for groups like al-Qaida, Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba

Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba – but the Saudi government is reluctant to stem the flow of money, according to Hillary Clinton.

“More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups,” says a secret December 2009 paper signed by the US secretary of state. Her memo urged US diplomats to redouble their efforts to stop Gulf money reaching extremists inPakistan and Afghanistan.

“Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide,” she said.

Three other Arab countries are listed as sources of militant money: Qatar,Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

Here is an excerpt from a diplomatic cable from 2009:

Despite this presence, however, more needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, LeT, and other terrorist groups, including Hamas, which probably raise millions of dollars annually from Saudi sources, often during Hajj and Ramadan. In contrast to its increasingly aggressive efforts to disrupt al-Qa’ida’s access to funding from Saudi sources, Riyadh has taken only limited action to disrupt fundraising for the UN 1267-listed Taliban and LeT-groups that are also aligned with al-Qa’ida and focused on undermining stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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