Responding to Corruption and the Kabul Bank Collapse

Responding to Corruption and the Kabul Bank Collapse
Author: Grant McLeod
Publisher:
Total Pages: 18
Release: 2016
Genre: Bank failures
ISBN:

"The 2010 collapse of Kabul Bank, at the time a critically important institution in Afghanistan's banking system, exposed major regulatory and transaction-related deficits in the system that permitted a large degree of fraud. The involvement of the political elite in the fraud made recovering funds and prosecuting cases extremely difficult. The resolution of the criminal elements and recovery of missing funds have faced the same challenges as before and have fared little better under current president Ashraf Ghani. Strengthening the system of financial oversight offers the best opportunity for success. Donor programs, including the IMF and World Bank, may support the necessary reform"--Publisher's web site.

The Tragedy of Kabul Bank

The Tragedy of Kabul Bank
Author: Abdul Qadeer Fitrat
Publisher: Page Publishing Inc
Total Pages: 501
Release: 2022-08-01
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1640273689

The Tragedy of Kabul Bank is the story of a massive fraud, deception and betrayal by a group of crony capitalists aided and abetted by the then highest political authorities of Afghanistan. It is an expose of rampant greed and excessive risk taking that shocked the world and caused enormous damage to Afghanistan's economy and image. The Tragedy of Kabul Bank is a narrative of a notorious case of corruption in post-Taliban Afghanistan, recipient of the largest foreign aid since European reconstruction. The Tragedy of Kabul Bank is a minute by minute account of multiple crises occurring at the same time and in quick succession and the panic that precipitated the largest bank run the country had ever seen. It is also an astonishing story of sacrifice and bravery by staff of the Central Bank who faithfully investigated members of the most powerful mafia in order to track and recover the stolen funds, but fell prey themselves. As the then Governor of the Central Bank, Fitrat struggled hard against impossible odds, but failed to bring the perpetrators to justice. Faced with imminent threats to his safety, he fled to the United States in June 2011. He and his innocent colleagues at the Central Bank became the subject of persecution by the ruling cliques experiencing enormous pain and suffering that has continued to this day. The alleged perpetrators who stole nearly one billion dollars of depositors' money and caused the bank's downfall largely escaped justice. Many of them including relatives of political elites were not even in the prosecution list and received no verdict. The most shocking episode came when President Karzai invited the alleged perpetrators for a luncheon in the Presidential Palace and instead of sending them to prison assured them of his unwavering support. The failure to prosecute the perpetrators became a major source of discontent for the international donor community and the Afghan people alike.

Rebuilding Afghanistan in Times of Crisis

Rebuilding Afghanistan in Times of Crisis
Author: Adenrele Awotona
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2019-06-11
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 135133400X

Rebuilding Afghanistan in Times of Crisis provides academics and researchers interested in planning, urbanism and conflict studies with a multidisciplinary, international assessment of the reconstruction and foreign aid efforts in Afghanistan. The book draws together expert contributions from countries across three continents – Asia, Europe and North America – which have provided external aid to Afghanistan. Using international, regional and local approaches, it highlights the importance of rebuilding sustainable communities in the midst of ongoing uncertainties. It explores the efficacy of external aid; challenges faced; the response of multilateral international agencies; the role of women in the reconstruction process; and community-based natural disaster risk management strategies. Finally, it looks at the lessons learned in the conflict reconstruction process to better prepare the country for future potential human, economic, infrastructural and institutional vulnerabilities.

The Afghanistan Papers

The Afghanistan Papers
Author: Craig Whitlock
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2022-08-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1982159014

A Washington Post Best Book of 2021 ​The #1 New York Times bestselling investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about America’s longest war, foreshadowing the Taliban’s recapture of Afghanistan, by Washington Post reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Whitlock. Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives. Distracted by the war in Iraq, the US military become mired in an unwinnable guerrilla conflict in a country it did not understand. But no president wanted to admit failure, especially in a war that began as a just cause. Instead, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations sent more and more troops to Afghanistan and repeatedly said they were making progress, even though they knew there was no realistic prospect for an outright victory. Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public’s understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains “fast-paced and vivid” (The New York Times Book Review) revelation after revelation from people who played a direct role in the war from leaders in the White House and the Pentagon to soldiers and aid workers on the front lines. In unvarnished language, they admit that the US government’s strategies were a mess, that the nation-building project was a colossal failure, and that drugs and corruption gained a stranglehold over their allies in the Afghan government. All told, the account is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who knew that the US government was presenting a distorted, and sometimes entirely fabricated, version of the facts on the ground. Documents unearthed by The Washington Post reveal that President Bush didn’t know the name of his Afghanistan war commander—and didn’t want to meet with him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he had “no visibility into who the bad guys are.” His successor, Robert Gates, said: “We didn’t know jack shit about al-Qaeda.” The Afghanistan Papers is a “searing indictment of the deceit, blunders, and hubris of senior military and civilian officials” (Tom Bowman, NRP Pentagon Correspondent) that will supercharge a long-overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.

Exporting Capitalism

Exporting Capitalism
Author: Ethan B. Kapstein
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2022-06-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0674251636

The US government has long sought investment opportunities for US companies in developing countries. But the results have been mixed: firms have preferred to invest in the industrial world and developing-world leaders have not always welcomed foreign investment. Violence and the presence of natural resources have also hindered foreign development.

The Many Faces of Corruption

The Many Faces of Corruption
Author: J. Edgardo Campos
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 484
Release: 2007-04-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0821367269

Corruption... How can policymakers and practitioners better comprehend the many forms and shapes that this socialpandemic takes? From the delivery of essential drugs, the reduction in teacher absenteeism, the containment of illegal logging, the construction of roads, the provision of water andelectricity, the international trade in oil and gas, the conduct of public budgeting and procurement, and the management of public revenues, corruption shows its many faces. 'The Many Faces of Corruption' attempts to bring greater clarity to the often murky manifestations of this virulent and debilitating social disease. It explores the use of prototype road maps to identify corruption vulnerabilities, suggests corresponding 'warning signals,' and proposes operationally useful remedial measures in each of several selected sectors and for a selected sampleof cross cutting public sector functions that are particularlyprone to corruption and that are critical to sector performance.Numerous technical experts have come together in this effort to develop an operationally useful approach to diagnosing and tackling corruption. 'The Many Faces of Corruption' is an invaluable reference for policymakers, practitioners, andresearchers engaged in the business of development.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan
Author: Niamatullah Ibrahimi
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2019-11-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0429841396

This book offers an overview of the formation of the Afghan state and of the politics, economic challenges and international relations of contemporary Afghanistan. It opens with an account of some of the key features that make Afghanistan unique and proceeds to discuss how the Afghan state acquired a distinctive character as a rentier state. In addition, the authors outline a complex range of domestic and external factors that led to the breakdown of the state, and how that breakdown gave rise to a set of challenges with which Afghan political and social actors have been struggling to deal since the 2001 international intervention that overthrew the anti-modernist Taliban regime. It then presents the different types of politics that Afghanistan has witnessed over the last two decades; examines some of the most important features of the Afghan economy; and demonstrates how Afghanistan’s geopolitical location and international relations more broadly have complicated the task of promoting stability in the post-2001 period. It concludes with some reflections on the factors that are likely to shape Afghanistan’s future trajectory and notes that if there are hopes for a better future, they largely rest on the shoulders of a globalised generation of younger Afghans. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of Middle East and Central Asian studies, international relations, politics, development studies and history.

Afghanistan: Politics, Elections, and Government Performance

Afghanistan: Politics, Elections, and Government Performance
Author:
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
Total Pages: 31
Release: 2009
Genre:
ISBN: 1437927416

In the context of a review of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan during September-November 2009, the performance and legitimacy of the Afghan government figured prominently. In his December 1, 2009, speech announcing a way forward in Afghanistan, President Obama stated that the Afghan government would be judged on performance, and "The days of providing a blank check are over." The policy statement was based, in part, on an assessment of the security situation furnished by the top commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, which warned of potential mission failure unless a fully resourced classic counterinsurgency strategy is employed. That counterinsurgency effort is deemed to require a legitimate Afghan partner. The Afghan government's limited writ and widespread official corruption are believed by U.S. officials to be helping sustain a Taliban insurgency and complicating international efforts to stabilize Afghanistan. At the same time, President Hamid Karzai has, through compromise with faction leaders, been able to confine ethnic disputes to political competition, enabling his government to focus on trying to win over those members of the ethnic Pashtun community that support Taliban and other insurgents.

American Kleptocracy

American Kleptocracy
Author: Casey Michel
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2021-11-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1250274532

A remarkable debut by one of America's premier young reporters on financial corruption, Casey Michel's American Kleptocracy offers an explosive investigation into how the United States of America built the largest illicit offshore finance system the world has ever known. "An indefatigable young American journalist who has virtually cornered the international kleptocracy beat on the US end of the black aquifer." —The Los Angeles Review of Books For years, one country has acted as the greatest offshore haven in the world, attracting hundreds of billions of dollars in illicit finance tied directly to corrupt regimes, extremist networks, and the worst the world has to offer. But it hasn’t been the sand-splattered Caribbean islands, or even traditional financial secrecy havens like Switzerland or Panama, that have come to dominate the offshoring world. Instead, the country profiting the most also happens to be the one that still claims to be the moral leader of the free world, and the one that claims to be leading the fight against the crooked and the corrupt: the USA. American Kleptocracy examines just how the United States’ implosion into a center of global offshoring took place: how states like Delaware and Nevada perfected the art of the anonymous shell company, and how post-9/11 reformers watched their success usher in a new flood of illicit finance directly into the U.S.; how African despots and post-Soviet oligarchs came to dominate American coastlines, American industries, and entire cities and small towns across the American Midwest; how Nazi-era lobbyists birthed an entire industry of spin-men whitewashing trans-national crooks and despots, and how dirty money has now begun infiltrating America's universities and think tanks and cultural centers; and how those on the front-line are trying to restore America's legacy of anti-corruption leadership—and finally end this reign of American kleptocracy.

On Corruption in America

On Corruption in America
Author: Sarah Chayes
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2020-08-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0525654860

From the prizewinning journalist and internationally recognized expert on corruption in government networks throughout the world comes a major work that looks homeward to America, exploring the insidious, dangerous networks of corruption of our past, present, and precarious future. “If you want to save America, this might just be the most important book to read now." —Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains Sarah Chayes writes in her new book, that the United States is showing signs similar to some of the most corrupt countries in the world. Corruption, she argues, is an operating system of sophisticated networks in which government officials, key private-sector interests, and out-and-out criminals interweave. Their main objective: not to serve the public but to maximize returns for network members. In this unflinching exploration of corruption in America, Chayes exposes how corruption has thrived within our borders, from the titans of America's Gilded Age (Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, et al.) to the collapse of the stock market in 1929, the Great Depression, and FDR's New Deal; from Joe Kennedy's years of banking, bootlegging, machine politics, and pursuit of infinite wealth to the deregulation of the Reagan Revolution--undermining this nation's proud middle class and union members. She then brings us up to the present as she shines a light on the Clinton policies of political favors and personal enrichment and documents Trump's hydra-headed network of corruption, which aimed to systematically undo the Constitution and our laws. Ultimately and most importantly, Chayes reveals how corrupt systems are organized, how they enable bad actors to bend the rules so their crimes are covered legally, how they overtly determine the shape of our government, and how they affect all levels of society, especially when the corruption is overlooked and downplayed by the rich and well-educated.