Som Washingtonpost skriver nedan handlar en stor del av den nya Afghanska ekonomin om ‘vänskaps’ kapitalism eller på ren svenska korruption och mutor mellan de som vill göra affärer och den härskande Karzai eliten tillsatt av väst. Något som i sig inte är förvånande.
Mer intressant är att cirkeln runt Karzai och hans familj har säkrat sig en reträtt plats i Dubai´tack vare multimiljon dollar lån från Afghanistans största bank. Liksom förstås de krigsherrar som kom till makten efter att Talibanerna störtats.
En del hade kanske undrat varför Sverige investerar en miljard kronor i att hålla Karzai regeringen vid makten….
Afghanistan’s biggest private bank — founded by the Islamic nation’s only world-class poker player — celebrated its fifth year in business last summer with a lottery for depositors at Paris Palace, a Kabul wedding hall.
Prizes awarded by Kabul Bank included nine apartments in the Afghan capital and cash gifts totaling more than $1 million. The bank trumpeted the event as the biggest prize drawing of its kind in Central Asia.
Less publicly, Kabul Bank’s boss has been handing out far bigger prizes to his country’s U.S.-backed ruling elite: multimillion-dollar loans for the purchase of luxury villas in Dubai by members of President Hamid Karzai’s family, his government and his supporters.
The close ties between Kabul Bank and Karzai’s circle reflect a defining feature of the shaky post-Taliban order in which Washington has invested more than $40 billion and the lives of more than 900 U.S. service members: a crony capitalism that enriches politically connected insiders and dismays the Afghan populace.
"What I’m doing is not proper, not exactly what I should do. But this is Afghanistan," Kabul Bank’s founder and chairman, Sherkhan Farnood, said in an interview when asked about the Dubai purchases and why, according to data from the Persian Gulf emirate’s Land Department, many of the villas have been registered in his name. "These people don’t want to reveal their names."
(…)
Many of those involved appear to have gone to considerable lengths to conceal the benefits they have received from Kabul Bank or its owners. Karzai’s older brother and his former vice president, for example, both have Dubai villas registered under Farnood’s name. Kabul Bank’s executives said their books record no loans for these or other Dubai deals financed at least in part by Farnood, including home purchases by Karzai’s cousin and the brother of Mohammed Qasim Fahim, his current first vice president and a much-feared warlord who worked closely with U.S. forces to topple the Taliban in 2001.
At a time when Washington is ramping up military pressure on the Taliban, the off-balance-sheet activities of Afghan bankers raise the risk of financial instability that could offset progress on the battlefield. Fewer than 5 percent of Afghans have bank accounts, but among those who do are many soldiers and policemen whose salaries are paid through Kabul Bank.
Kabul Bank’s Sherkhan Farnood feeds crony capitalism in Afghanistan – washingtonpost.com
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