主题：从喀布尔 涉嫌贪污的数十亿美元现金空运 -- 自以为是

WSJ, 2010-6-28

机器翻译的，不好意思

涉嫌贪污的数十亿美元现金空运从喀布尔

由马修罗森伯格

喀布尔超过30亿美元现金已公开飞行在过去3年中，喀布尔国际机场，这个数目如此之大，美国调查人员相信顶部阿富汗官员和他们的同伙发送分流美国的援助和后勤美元和毒品十亿美元资金国外的金融避风港。

现金装入箱子，托盘上堆放成飞机，是合法的声明和行动加载。不过，美国和阿富汗官员说，他们的目标主要是因为反腐败和贩毒的规模调查的流动相对于阿富汗的经济规模小，其起源的匿名性。

官员认为，部分现金，如果不是大多数，是从西方的援助项目和美国，欧洲和北约的合同，以提供安全抽走，用品和重建阿富汗的联军部队的工作。北大西洋条约组织花了大约140亿美元仅去年一年就在这里。赚取利润的鸦片贸易，也是一种资金流向的一部分，因为是现金收入的塔利班从毒品和敲诈，官员说。

申报的金额，因为它离开机场是巨大的国家，那里的国内生产总值去年达135亿美元。更宣布从喀布尔飞往现金每年比阿富汗政府在税收和海关收入收集全国。 “这不是像他们长在树上的钱在这里，”一位美国官员说，调查腐败和塔利班的资金。 “一个像我们的税金，这看起来很多被盗。与鸦片，当然。”

通过机场的资金大部分是通过由经常被秘密所谓的“哈瓦拉”，私人资金与穆斯林世界的根源可追溯到几百年服装企业转移提出，官员说。

该官员认为哈瓦拉客户谁发出了他们的钱数百万美元在国外，包括高级官员和总统哈米德卡尔扎伊的政府及其同伙，包括副总统穆罕默德法希姆和总统的兄弟，马哈茂德卡尔扎伊，一个有影响力的商人之一。

据称他们在那里得到的钱是被调查的问题之一。

副总统法希姆，通过他的哥哥回应，阿法希姆，商人，谁否认这些指控。 “我哥哥？他不知道什么钱，”法希姆先生说。

马哈茂德说，卡尔扎伊在他的唯一合法企业从事采访，并没有转移到该国的大量现金。

在1月22日财务公开的形式，他给了华尔街日报，审查，卡尔扎伊宣布他的净资产为与二一一六三三四七美元和九百万六千一百〇六美元资产负债12157491。他报告了刚刚超过40万美元，但没有提供日期的年收入。

马哈茂德卡尔扎伊，美国公民，指责他的指控是非法收入转移对来自阿富汗的政治对手的现金。

“是的，数以百万计离开这个国家，但它是所有政客所。贿赂，腐败，这一切，”他说。 “但是让我们看看谁是服用。让我们不下去了谣言。我说这是美国人。”

卡尔扎伊总统在记者招待会上解决这一问题星期六，加强对业务要求审议通过官员的亲戚运行。

“赚钱是罚款和资金转移到该国很好，”他说。 “政府官员的亲属可以做到这一点，开始与我的兄弟。但有一个腐败的可能性，”他说，没有被明确。

与2007年和今年2月初，至少三一八〇〇〇〇〇〇〇美元通过机场出入境的，由海关根据阿富汗华尔街日报审查记录。

在沙里，电子沙赫扎达金融贸易中心，在喀布尔的主要货币的外汇市场。超过30亿美元的现金已被公开飞行了喀布尔国际机场在过去3年。

美国官员说，这笔钱实际上可能宣布更高：快递单之间进行的2008年下半年和2009年年底23亿美元，美国高级官员说，原因，在调查掌握的其他文件。

这位官员说，官员认为这笔钱被宣布，阿富汗和海关记录可能不完整。

在他们的声明，信使必须记录自己的名字和他们的钱是运输的起源。相反，他们通常记录了阿富汗哈瓦拉是使转移和在迪拜一个是接受现金的名称。通常，这些钱是不实际的发送者姓名的官员说。

“我们甚至不知道这一点。我们不知道谁的是，为什么要离开，或往哪里去”，财政部部长奥马尔Zakhilwal说，也就是关于离开机场的钱十二月会议。

资本外逃在2010年继续高速增长。在本周截至5月29日，超过2000万美元的一半左右，美国的货币，离开了机场，据阿富汗高级官员的习俗。除了美元，正在飞行的货币里亚尔从沙特和巴基斯坦卢比不等，甚至挪威克朗现在过时德国马克兑换欧元。

“你可以在飞机上盒背面装载。你得到家伙，从字面上，使飞机上的钱箱”之称的美国高级官员。

宣布的现金被认为是代表唯一的“一小部分移动出机场，在阿富汗所有钱”，说将军米阿西夫贾巴尔哈伊勒，行政海关在喀布尔机场的官员。

对未申报的美元，甚至数十亿几亿，正在跨越阿富汗边境进行多孔与伊朗和巴基斯坦，阿富汗哈瓦拉的一些分支机构，他说。

一个数字通常由阿富汗和西方官员列举是1000万美元，每天离开阿富汗。这是去年36.5亿美元，比目前的国内生产总值的四分之一以上。

官员不能说多少钱是进入阿富汗的未来，这不是由阿富汗当局追踪。

阿富汗特有的腐败和高级官员在鸦片贸易涉嫌离开了政府深深不得人心的，加剧了对塔利班的支持，削弱战争的努力，现在是说服阿富汗人支持自己的国家，把从客场重点叛乱分子。

美国官员还试图破坏货币流向塔利班。

叛乱被认为是勒索赚取了可观的经营开支部分与鸦片贸易，可以很容易地移居国外以逃避侦查或扣押的资金。

但是，反腐败的努力，越来越多地对美国及其西方盟国的中心舞台。

恢复阿富汗政府的威信，是在美国反叛乱战略的核心原则。打击腐败是政府目前首要任务作为重要的实际打击叛乱分子。把资金流动的调查是在重点的转移部分。

以美国为首的举措具有重大的风险：由美国官员认为，其中许多是在航运资金撤出该国涉及的主要是阿富汗权力掮客谁在反对塔利班的斗争的重要盟友。

平衡的要求，清理与需要继续同一侧他们的政府并不容易，尤其是after的西方官员这么多年，有效地为敌，他们的阿富汗盟友视而不见的不法行为的指控，美国官员说。

彼得雷乌斯，谁是接任阿富汗美军最高指挥官斯坦利 McChrystal从将军不久，面临着越来越知道该国主要的许多球员在同一时间，在他的指挥官员正在调查的额外负担他们和他们的一些同伙。

正式的银行系统在这里是处于初级阶段，与哈瓦拉构成了金融业的支柱。美国国务院说，有80％至90％的通过哈瓦拉在阿富汗的所有金融交易。

什么是一个有效的荣誉系统和他们所从事的多是合法的运行哈瓦拉网络。

在其最简单的，一个客户在一个经销商脱落钱，被赋予一个数字代码或密码，然后由这些钱的收件人时使用的现金拿起别处。

哈瓦拉经营者则解决了彼此。

哈瓦拉收费标准远远高于银行的便宜，往往低至150元移动10万美元，并转移可在几分钟或几小时内完成，而不是天。

联合国，北约和阿富汗的国际援助团体，有时甚至使用哈瓦拉转移资金和支付工作人员。

阿富汗，由三十年战争破灭了，主要是一个现金的社会。 “阿富汗是一个基于个人关系和信任建立的国家。

如果有人相信他们，他将与他们的业务，“纳吉说，哈吉，在喀布尔的哈瓦拉协会主席。”这是哈瓦拉一样的。“

但这些关系也使哈瓦拉特别困难的调查人员深入到寻找身份的资金被转移。

在现金载荷大多采取的8个航班从喀布尔至迪拜每日一在阿拉伯联合酋长国。富丽阿富汗人早已停在迪拜他们的钱。

迪拜酋长国和邻国的紧张与银行保密法，也已被使用的塔利班和基地组织作为一种方便的区域设置移动或藏匿的钱，虽然酋长国当局已关闭资助美国努力的恐怖资金流动。

调查人员说，这是很难追查阿富汗钱从迪拜去。其中一些可能停留在迪拜，无论是在银行或财产，有的可能是转移到美国和欧洲，还是回到阿富汗和巴基斯坦。迪拜官员并未回应要求就此发表评论。

在过去的一年中，美国和其他西方官员震惊的增长方式中，腐败是助长了塔利班和迹象表明，西方监测不善美元注入了大量的帮助树立移植文化的支持。

美国毒品管制局领导的行动破坏塔利班财政去年成立，现时主要集中于腐败，军事情报是投入了更多的资产，以对抗的问题。北约还设立了一个工作小组，审议给予提供安全，用品和重建为联军工作合同。

美国官员一直在与阿富汗中央银行对哈瓦拉西式监管。

在过去几年中制定的阿富汗法规，哈瓦拉必须向中央银行他们在每月每一笔交易。

当他们怀疑非法活动，他们必须提交可疑活动报告，由于银行在美国做

遵守也一直不稳定，央行官员说。多数人仍然保持其交易的手写总帐书籍有时在代码转录，跟踪。

到目前为止，没有一个可疑活动报告已经提交，央行官员说，与执法问题处理谁。

现金也没有移动侦测或申报容易通过机场的贵宾区，也就是官员不搜查，经常驱使他们的飞机直线上升，根据将军阿西夫，美国和阿富汗官员。

将军阿西夫说，去年，他的手下发现了数百万美元的 “桩”，所有未申报的，并试图阻止它被放在一个到迪拜航班。

但是，“从我有较高的UPS很多的压力，”将军阿西夫说。他拒绝说出谁的官员被他施加压力，但他说：“它来自非常，非常高级的人。他们告诉我，这与央行的安排，并告诉我让他走了。”

Corruption Suspected in Airlift of Billions in Cash From Kabul

By MATTHEW ROSENBERG

KABUL—More than $3 billion in cash has been openly flown out of Kabul International Airport in the past three years, a sum so large that U.S. investigators believe top Afghan officials and their associates are sending billions of diverted U.S. aid and logistics dollars and drug money to financial safe havens abroad.

The cash—packed into suitcases, piled onto pallets and loaded into airplanes—is declared and legal to move. But U.S. and Afghan officials say they are targeting the flows in major anticorruption and drug trafficking investigations because of their size relative to Afghanistan's small economy and the murkiness of their origins.

Officials believe some of the cash, if not most, is siphoned from Western aid projects and U.S., European and NATO contracts to provide security, supplies and reconstruction work for coalition forces in Afghanistan. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization spent about $14 billion here last year alone. Profits reaped from the opium trade are also a part of the money flow, as is cash earned by the Taliban from drugs and extortion, officials say.

The amount declared as it leaves the airport is vast in a nation where the gross domestic product last year totaled $13.5 billion. More declared cash flies out of Kabul each year than the Afghan government collects in tax and customs revenue nationwide. "It's not like they grow money on trees here," said a U.S. official investigating corruption and Taliban financing. "A lot of this looks like our tax dollars being stolen. And opium, of course."

Most of the funds passing through the airport are being moved by often-secretive outfits called "hawalas," private money transfer businesses with roots in the Muslim world stretching back centuries, officials say.

The officials believe hawala customers who have sent millions of dollars of their money abroad include high-ranking officials and their associates in President Hamid Karzai's administration, including Vice President Mohammed Fahim, and one of the president's brothers, Mahmood Karzai, an influential businessmen.

Where they allegedly get the money is one of the questions under investigation.

Vice President Fahim, responded through his brother, A.H. Fahim, a businessman, who denied the allegations. "My brother? He doesn't know anything about money," Mr. Fahim said.

Mahmood Karzai said in an interview he has engaged in only legitimate businesses and has never transferred large sums of cash from the country.

In a Jan. 22 financial disclosure form that he gave the Wall Street Journal to review, Mr. Karzai declared his net worth was $12,157,491 with assets of $21,163,347 and liabilities of $9,006,106. He reported an annual income of just over $400,000 but didn't provide dates.

Mahmood Karzai, an American citizen, blamed the allegations that he was transferring illicitly earned cash from Afghanistan on political opponents.

"Yes, millions of dollars are leaving this country but it is all taken by politicians. Bribes, corruption, all of it," he said. "But let's find out who is taking it. Let's not go on rumors. I've said this to the Americans."

President Karzai addressed the matter at a news conference Saturday, calling for greater scrutiny of business run by relatives of officials.

"Making money is fine and taking money out of the country is fine," he said. "The relatives of government officials can do this, starting with my brothers. But there's a possibility of corruption," he said without being specific.

Between the beginning of 2007 and February of this year, at least $3.18 billion left through the airport, according to Afghan customs records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The Sharay-e-Shahzada financial trading center, the main money exchange market in Kabul. More than $3 billion in cash has been openly flown out of Kabul International Airport in the past three years.

U.S. officials say the sum of declared money may actually be higher: One courier alone carried $2.3 billion between the second half of 2008 and the end of 2009, said a senior U.S. official, citing other documents that are in the possession of investigators.

The officer said officials believe the money was declared, and that Afghan customs records may not be complete.

In their declarations, couriers must record their own names and the origins of the money they are transporting. Instead, they usually record the name of the Afghan hawala that is making the transfer and the one in Dubai that is accepting the cash. Often, the actual sender of the money isn't named, officials said.

"We do not even know about it. We don't know whose it is, why it is leaving, or where it is going," Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal said at a December conference about the money leaving the airport.

The capital flight has continued apace in 2010. In the week ending May 29, more than $20 million, about half of it in U.S. currency, left the airport, according to a senior Afghan customs official. Apart from U.S. dollars, the currencies being flown out range from Saudi riyals and Pakistani rupees to Norwegian kroners and even outdated Deutsche marks now redeemable for euros.

"You get boxes loaded on the back of airplanes. You get guys, literally, bringing boxes of cash onto the plane," said the senior U.S. official.

The declared cash is believed to represent only "a small percentage" of the money moving out of the airport and all of Afghanistan, said Gen. M. Asif Jabar Khail, the chief customs officer at Kabul's airport.

Hundreds of millions of undeclared dollars, maybe billions, are being carried across Afghanistan's porous border with Iran and Pakistan, where a number of Afghan hawalas have branches, he said.

One figure often cited by Afghan and Western officials is $10 million a day leaving Afghanistan. That is $3.65 billion a year, more than a quarter of the current GDP.

Officials can't say how much money is coming into Afghanistan; that isn't tracked by Afghan authorities.

Afghanistan's endemic corruption and the suspected involvement of high-ranking officials in the opium trade has left the government deeply unpopular and fueled support for the Taliban, undercutting a war effort that is now focused on convincing Afghans to support their own state and turn away from the insurgents.

U.S. officials are also trying to disrupt the flow of money to the Taliban.

The insurgency is believed to earn a sizable portion of its operating expenses from extortion and the opium trade, funds that can easily be moved abroad to avoid detection or seizure.

But anticorruption efforts have increasingly taken center stage for the U.S. and its Western allies.

Restoring the credibility of the Afghan government is a central tenet in the American counter-insurgency strategy. Combating corruption by the government is now as important a priority as actually fighting insurgents. The investigations into the money flow are part of the shift in focus.

The U.S.-led initiatives carry significant risks: many of those believed by U.S. officials to be involved in shipping money out of the country are key Afghan power brokers who are important allies in the fight against the Taliban.

Balancing demands to clean up the government with the need to keep them on the same side will not be easy, especially after so many years of Western officials effectively turning a blind eye to allegations of wrongdoing by their Afghan allies, U.S. officials say.

Gen. David Petraeus, who is to take over shortly as top U.S. commander in Afghanistan from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, faces the added burden of getting to know many of the main players in the country at the same time that officials under his command are investigating some of them and their associates.

The formal banking system here is in its infancy, and hawalas form the backbone of the financial sector. The State Department says that 80% to 90% of all financial transactions in Afghanistan run through hawalas.

Hawala networks run on what is effectively an honor system and much of the business they do is legitimate.

At their simplest, a customer drops off money at one dealer and is given a numeric code or password, which is then used by the money's recipient when the cash is picked up elsewhere.

The hawala operators then settle up among themselves.

Hawala fees are far cheaper than standard banks, often as little as $150 to move $100,000, and transfers can be done in minutes or hours as opposed to days.

The United Nations, NATO and international aid groups in Afghanistan have at times even used hawalas to move money and pay staff.

Afghanistan, shattered by three decades of war, is a predominantly cash society. "Afghanistan is a country that is built on personal connections and trust.

If someone trusts them, he will do business with them," said Haji Najib, the chairman of Kabul's hawala association. "It is the same for hawala."

But those ties also make hawalas especially difficult for investigators to penetrate to find the identity of funds being transferred.

Most of the cash loads are taken on one of the eight flights a day from Kabul to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Wealthy Afghans have long parked their money in Dubai.

Dubai and neighboring emirates, with their tight banking secrecy laws, also have been used by the Taliban and al Qaeda as a convenient locale to move or stash money, although Emirati authorities have aided American efforts to shut the flow of terror money.

Investigators say it is tough to trace where the Afghan money goes from Dubai. Some of it likely stays in Dubai, either in banks or property, some is probably moved to U.S. and Europe or back to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Dubai officials didn't respond to requests to comment.

Over the past year, U.S. and other Western officials have grown alarmed by the ways in which corruption was fueling support for the Taliban and indications that the massive infusions of poorly monitored Western dollars were helping foster a culture of graft.

A U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration-led operation to disrupt Taliban finances created last year is now largely focused on corruption, and military intelligence is dedicating more assets to fighting the problem. NATO is also creating a task force to scrutinize contracts given to provide security, supplies and reconstruction work for coalition forces.

American officials have been working with Afghanistan's central bank to impose Western-style regulation on hawalas.

Under Afghan regulations enacted in the last few years, hawalas must report to the central bank every transaction they made monthly.

When they suspect illicit activity, they are required to file suspicious activity reports, as banks do in the U.S.

Compliance has been spotty, say central bank officials. Most still keep track of their transactions in handwritten ledger books, sometimes transcribed in code.

So far, not one suspicious activity report has been filed, said a central bank official who deals with enforcement matters.

Cash also moves easily without detection or declaration through the airport's VIP section, where officials aren't searched and often driven straight up to their planes, according to Gen. Asif and U.S. and Afghan officials.

Gen. Asif said that last year, his men found a "pile of millions of dollars," all undeclared, and tried to stop it from being put on a flight to Dubai.

But "there was lots of pressure from my higher ups," Gen. Asif said. He refused to name the officials who were pressuring him, but said: "It came from very, very senior people. They told me there was an arrangement with the central bank and told me to let it go."

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