How USAID Laundered Money to the Taliban

UN pooled accounts. Pallets of cash. And a covert cash printing operation.

Freedom Center Investigates has a new article on how USAID laundered money to the Taliban.

I believe it’s an important article, but I also thought it might be a good idea to have a briefer more visual explainer of how the scheme worked. SIGAR, the government’s Afghan war watchdog, already provided a good visual breakdown of some of the scheme.

But let’s start here.

1. In 2021, Afghanistan’s central bank, controlled by the “financier of the IEDs” that had killed over 1,000 U.S. soldiers, began tweeting pictures of shipments of blue bags of hundred dollar bills as “humanitarian aid”.

Australia’s ABC even featured a photo of the blue bags on the tarmac at Kabul International Airport containing $40 million. One of several such shipments.

Where was the money coming from? Us.

2. Here’s how I break it down in ‘USAID’s Taliban Money Laundering Scheme’.

USAID put the money into pooled UN accounts which it did not control allowing it to deny sending money to the Taliban.

3. The UN bought and shipped billions in hundred dollar bills to Afghanistan. Then deposited them in a private bank and transferred money to ‘non-profits’ on the ground. This let the UN deny it was giving money to the Taliban.

4. The non-profits then exchanged the money with ‘Afghanis’ from a Taliban-controlled bank.

Here are SIGAR’s graphics for this arrangement.

Figure 1 – Request, Purchase , and Transport of UN Cash Shipments.

Figure 2 – Conversion Process of U.S. Dollars to Afghanis.

Now here’s where things get crazy.

5. The Afghani currency was being printed on behalf of the Taliban through the Biden administration. So we were behind the shipment of both dollars and Afghanis to the Taliban. The dollars were traded for Afghanis. And the Taliban got to prop up their currency and come away with a huge supply of dollars.

Now that you know how it worked, please read and share USAID’s Taliban Money Laundering Scheme where I delve into some of the implications of this arrangement.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center will continue fighting for accountability at USAID and every government agency that engaged in corruption and money laundering.

AUTHOR