U.N. officials demanded bribes to deliver U.S. assistance to Afghanistan, says inspector general

"Corrupt U.N. officials in Afghanistan have stolen U.S. assistance by demanding bribes to allow the aid money to flow, an American inspector general charged Wednesday.

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said senior U.N. officials ‘personally profit’ from the influx of assistance flowing into the troubled nation by taking advantage of a persistent pay-to-play culture.

Ten people, including a current U.N. official and a former official, confirmed the bribes.

The U.N. officials connect those with the money to the organizations that deliver the services. It’s those nongovernmental organizations that pay the bribes to win the contracts.

Several people reported that the U.N. officials were collaborating with the Taliban, the fundamentalist sect that took control of the Afghan government in 2021. That includes payments and, in some cases, demands that Taliban officials or their relatives be added as shareholders or board members of the nongovernmental organizations.

One outcome is that aid goes most heavily to areas favored by the Taliban rather than ‘the neediest.’

‘Interviewees told SIGAR that UN officials demand bribes from companies and NGOs seeking contracts from their agencies. They said that these are calculated as a percentage of the contract at stake, with estimates varying between 5 and 50 percent,’ the inspector general said in a report.

One former Afghan government official said the bigger the contract, the more senior the U.N. official who needs to be bribed.

One director of a nongovernmental organization said 70% of U.N. contracts in Afghanistan required payments. The World Food Program, a major U.N. player, accounted for ‘most’ of the allegations, but the inspector general said it also collected reports about eight other U.N. divisions.

Those findings were part of a broader report looking at how the Taliban have managed to funnel American money intended to help the country’s downtrodden residents into their own projects..."