Banksters, Afghan style

Der Spiegel in July: "Billions of dollars are being secreted out of Kabul to help well-connected Afghans buy luxury villas in Dubai."

The Dubai villas are usually registered in the name of those issuing the loans, such as Sherkhan Farnood, deposed chairman of Kabul Bank, who transferred hundreds of millions of dollars from Afghanistan to Dubai in 2009.

In July Farnood boasted :

"Kabul Bank is so flush that it is building a $30 million headquarters, a cluster of shimmering towers of bulletproof glass."

Since yesterday Kabul Bank is more like a clusterfuck of shimmering droves of Afghans making bank withdrawals and the only bulletproof part is the time-honoured bankster strategy of asking the US Treasury for a bailout. Farnood today :

"If we survive Saturday and Sunday, we will be okay," said Farnood, who spoke at his luxury waterfront villa in Dubai shortly after his return to the Persian Gulf emirate from Kabul.

Mahmoud Karzai, brother to President Karzai, third largest shareholder in Kabul Bank and ... wait for it ... proud owner of a Dubai villa :

"America should do something. If the Treasury Department will guarantee that everyone will get their money, maybe that will work," said the president's brother, who rushed to Kabul on Wednesday from Dubai, where he spends most of his time in a Palm Jumeirah villa purchased with Kabul Bank money. "

Quick financial status update on your investment as a shareholder in those Dubai villas :

Canada's aid in Afghanistan will amount to $1.9B over the ten-year period ending in 2011, making Canada one of Afghanistan's largest donors. In the 2008/2009 fiscal year, Canada disbursed approximately $224M but unfortunately the Dubai real estate market collapsed in 2008.

War is a racket villa in Dubai

Der Spiegel :
"Billions of dollars are being secreted out of Kabul to help well-connected Afghans buy luxury villas in Dubai. Amid concerns that the money could be the result of corruption, American politicians have temporarily cut off [$3.9-billion in] aid to the Afghan government."

Proud new owners of villas in Dubai:
"a brother and a cousin of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, one of Karzai's former vice presidents and the brother one of the country's two current vice presidents."

Properties are registered under the names of the individuals issuing the loans, such as Sherkhan Farnood, the founder and chairman of Kabul Bank, Afghanistan's largest private bank.
Farnood : "What I'm doing is not proper, not exactly what I should do. But this is Afghanistan."

Kabul Bank's executives helped finance President Hamid Karzai's reelection campaign last year, and the bank is partly owned by Mahmoud Karzai, the Afghan president's older brother, and by Haseen Fahim, the brother of Karzai's vice presidential running mate.
Karzai's brother has "an informal home-loan agreement with Kabul Bank and pays $7,000 a month in interest".

Khalilullah Fruzi, chief executive of the bank, says "Kabul Bank is so flush that it is building a $30 million headquarters, a cluster of shimmering towers of bulletproof glass."
The bank is also spending millions to hire gunmen from a company called Khurasan Security Services, which, according to registration documents, used to be controlled by Fruzi and is now run by his brother.

Meanwhile, a new survey finds that corruption in Afghanistan has doubled since 2007, with one in seven Afghans paying nearly $1 billion in bribes last year, and US contractors are leaving the country without paying Afghan construction companies hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars owed, but McCain says winning Kandahar is the key to winning the war.

And so it goes....



Canada's aid in Afghanistan will amount to $1.9B over the ten-year period ending in 2011, making Canada one of Afghanistan's largest donors. In the 2008/2009 fiscal year, Canada disbursed approximately $224M.
And I'll bet you never expected to be part owner of a villa in Dubai.

And you thought the Dubai Ports deal was bad...

Let's see now. Istithmar is the investment arm of Dubai World. Dubai World is wholly owned by the Government of Dubai. Dubai World also owns Dubai Ports World and now, P&O Maritime Services.

In short, the Government of Dubai owns the works. They love to buy stuff.

You may remember there was something of an issue when Dubai Ports World, owned by Dubai World (on which the sun never sets), which owns Istithmar, the lot of which is wholly owned by the Government of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, purchased P&O Maritime and it looked like Arabs were going to be shipped over to operate six US port terminal facilities, including the P&O terminal in New York.

The Republicans in the US Congress went ape-shit and the deal was blocked. Well, sort of. DPW, subsidiary of DW, owned by the Dubai government, which also owns Istithmar, continued to operate the Port of New Jersey because New Jersey wouldn't let them sell it.

At the time of that information, it became obvious to anybody with a functioning synapse that these people with bad togas and funny headbands were more interested in the shopping aspect of acquisition. Got a port? I don't have one. Could I possibly buy it from you for more than its appraised value?

That sort of thing. Emiratis just really love to buy things.

Well, looky, looky what Blue Gal found!! And from the Toronto Star, no less.

The terrorists are now in a position to control the designer handbag Paris Hilton carries. Is there no end to this?

Guess who's been running the port of New Jersey

You may remember the furor that was the Dubai Ports World deal. That was when Bush ran full-face into his own campaign of fear.

The Bush Cargo Culture had spent the previous five years suggesting that any human with dark hair, a swarthy complexion and an accent that couldn't be identified was a prime suspect for a terrorist act. Then, Peninsular & Orient Steamship Lines sold everything to Dubai Ports World, headquartered in, you remember now, Dubai.

The problem was that P&O Ports was a part of the deal and that meant that the P&O port terminal facilities in six US ports were now being handed over to a bunch of murderous Arabs. It meant that all of P&O's terminals, worldwide, were being handed over to DPW. Most countries just shrugged. The US probably should have done the same thing. The threat from DPW ownership of the P&O terminal in New Jersey, for example, was next to non-existent.

That didn't stop the whole thing from boiling over. DPW is a state-owned company and that meant Bush was allowing Arab ownership of an arguably strategic facility. His own party turned on him creating an enchanting situation where his recent water-carriers in Congress turned on him.

There is a whole series of posts here which will provide details. The interesting part of this is that Bush, had he not spent the previous five years laying the groundwork for his own embarrassment, was actually quite right. There was nothing about the DPW deal that presented any kind of threat whatsoever. The truth be known, most citizens of Dubai would never have any reason to so much as visit one of those ports to work. It is a simple truth: Emiratis don't work. They import all of their labourers and over 80 percent of the population of Dubai are immigrants.

Anyway, that was all one year ago. By early March 2006, DPW had agreed to sell-off their newly acquired US operations to an American company. Everything quietened down.

Sort of.

It seems DPW still owns the terminal operations and the Port of New Jersey is demanding $84 million for "port improvements" from DPW, before the facilities can be sold. So... after all the gnashing of teeth, all the flailing of arms and all the rhetoric that flowed, the Arab state-owned company, Dubai Ports World, has been running the former P&O terminal in New Jersey anyway. And... no terrorists.

If you want the most delicious take on this you must pay a visit to Blue Gal where she describes the social habits of Dubai Emiratis in some eloquent detail.

Owning ports? No big deal.

Going shopping? If there is a shopping festival the good citizens of Dubai will go.