Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai UPI/Roger L. Wollenberg |
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WASHINGTON, June 29 (UPI) -- A key U.S. lawmaker, concerned about corruption in the Afghan government, says she plans to withhold $3.9 billion of U.S. aid to Afghanistan.
Outraged over alleged efforts by the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai to stop a corruption investigation, U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., said the funding would be blocked from next year's spending bill until she is confident U.S. taxpayer money "is not being abused to line the pockets of corrupt Afghan government officials, drug lords and terrorists," The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
Lowey heads the House Appropriations subcommittee overseeing the budget of the U.S. State Department. The Post report said Lowey also announced the committee would begin holding hearings next month on Afghan corruption problems.
The Post said it had earlier reported senior Afghan officials have repeatedly blocked corruption investigations of individuals with political connections to Karzai's administration.
U.S. officials told the Post Afghan prosecutors and investigators lately have been told to cross out names from files, deter efforts to arrest senior officials and disregard evidence against executives of a financial firm suspected of helping elite Afghans move vast sums of money to overseas accounts.
"The alleged shipment of billions in donor funds out of Afghanistan and allegations of Afghan government insiders impeding corruption investigations are outrageous," Lowey said in a statement, noting the government "must demonstrate that corruption is being aggressively investigated and prosecuted."
The funds targeted to be blocked would finance infrastructure projects in Afghanistan. Any congressional action, however, would not impact money for military operations or humanitarian relief, the report said.
Britain's Daily Telegraph reported Karzai's Western supporters are irate over the president's failure to stamp out corruption as money flows in to fight the Taliban. The report said NATO spent more than $15 billion in Afghanistan in 2009, compared to Afghanistan's 2008 annual gross domestic product of $12 billion.
