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Afghan anti-corruption program is corrupt, US officials say
 [Stars & Stripes] KABUL, Afghanistan ‐ An anti-corruption program once seen as a beacon of hope in Afghanistan is failing to accomplish much, according to U.S. officials who say the nation’s top prosecutor is corrupt.The Anti Corruption Justice Center’s efforts have stagnated, while U.S. officials described Afghanistan’s once-lauded attorney general as dishonest, corrupt and deficient, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said in a report released last week. "The Center was portrayed and emphasized as one of the good things in Afghanistan," Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, said in an interview. "(The report) is pretty devastating for the government, or anyone who wants to argue that there has been important progress and we shouldn’t give up on Afghanistan." The attorney general’s office declined comment after multiple requests from Stars and Stripes. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani established the Justice Center with considerable help from Western military advisers and diplomatic organizations in 2016. The Afghan attorney general’s office still tries most corruption cases, but it refers major cases involving senior officials or major sums of money to the Justice Center. U.S. officials said the Justice Center seemed to be making progress when it completed its first money-laundering case this year. But there was no significant progress made in major corruption cases this year, the report said. The Justice Center seems to be chasing low-level cases to placate its Western donors, instead of targeting corrupt Afghan high-ranking officials, it said. "The attorney general’s performance is deficient, his accomplishments are lacking, and he fails to cooperate with the U.S. Embassy on anticorruption matters," members of the U.S. Justice Department said in a SIGAR report. Posted by: Besoeker 2018-11-09 |
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