Former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani virtually actually didn’t flee Kabul because it fell to the Taliban with thousands and thousands of {dollars} in stolen money, a US authorities watchdog’s report mentioned Monday.
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) report, which will probably be revealed on Tuesday, is an interim doc, because the workplace remains to be awaiting solutions to questions despatched to Ghani.
First reported by Politico, it interviews witnesses in addition to officers who had been within the helicopter convoy with Ghani as they rapidly fled the Presidential Palace in Kabul whereas the Taliban marched into the capital on August 15, 2021.
Read: Former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani fled with vehicles, chopper full of money, claims Russia
In subsequent days, a number of studies steered that Ghani and the opposite officers took as much as $169 million in Afghan authorities cash with them. Ghani has all the time fiercely denied these claims.
“Although SIGAR found that some cash was taken from the grounds of the palace and loaded onto these helicopters, evidence indicates that this number did not exceed $1 million and may have been closer in value to $500,000,” the report states.
It based mostly that evaluation closely on interviews with the witnesses and officers concerned, all of whom mentioned they noticed no indicators of such giant quantities of money on the helicopters already overloaded with folks fleeing for his or her lives.
“$169 million in hundred dollar bills, stacked end to end, would form a block 7.5 feet (2.3 meters) long, 3 feet wide, and 3 feet tall… This block would have weighed 3,722 pounds, or nearly two tons,” SIGAR famous, including that witnesses reported “minimal luggage” on the helicopters, which had no cargo holds.
Instead, one official carried round $200,000, one other carried some $240,000 and others had “$5,000 to $10,000 in their pockets… No one had millions,” one former senior official informed SIGAR.
“If true, this puts the total amount of cash on board the three helicopters at approximately $500,000, with $440,000 belonging to the Afghan government,” the report mentioned.
Read: Never meant to desert Afghan folks: Ashraf Ghani defends determination to flee Kabul
“SIGAR also identified suspicious circumstances in which approximately $5 million in cash was allegedly left behind at the presidential palace,” the report added.
It was not clear the place the cash got here from or what it was for, “but it was supposedly divided by members of the Presidential Protective Service after the helicopters departed but before the Taliban captured the palace,” it mentioned.
The report mentioned there seems to have been “ample opportunity and effort to plunder Afghan government coffers.”
But, the watchdog added, it “does not have sufficient evidence to determine with certainty whether hundreds of millions of dollars were removed from the country by Afghan officials as the government collapsed or whether any stolen money was provided by the United States.”