A top United States official has said that corruption in Afghanistan may rob the $8bn of international annual aid pledged to this country beyond 2014.
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko is raising serious concerns that a new international plan to deposit more than $4bn in military and another $4bn in civilian aid directly into accounts controlled by the Afghan government will be ravaged by corruption.
Mr Sopko added that he has evidence the Afghan government has robbed bank accounts and refused to prosecute high ranking officials accused of corruption.
The US official warns that aids should seriously supervised in Afghanistan.
The Afghan government has been frequently criticised at for its failure in tackling corruption and prosecuting corrupt officials.
“Pervasive corruption may divert a large portion of this money from its intended uses,” John Sopko told a Washington group on Wednesday.
He says that international community agreed to aid over another $16 billion through 2016, and half of it will be deposited directly into Afghan government accounts to spend on what they want.
This US official criticises on collection system of internal revenues in Afghanistan, saying that Afghan government does not have the ability to control its costumes’ revenues which are known great source of the country.
But, the Afghanistan promises more efforts to fight corruption.
“We don’t reject corruption at the customs, but our efforts are ongoing to tackle this,” said a spokesman to the Finance Ministry, Wahidullah Tawhidi.
But another government entity aimed to reducing corruption is saying that there is no will in the Afghan government to fight corruption. The head of High office of Oversight and Anti-Corruption, Azizullah Ludin, said that everyone in the government should be committed to deal with this issue.
So far the US has spent more than $54 billion on the reconstruction effort, mostly to train and equip the Afghan national security forces but the US official is asking for more transparency about the spent of aids.