In 2010, the United States launched a program to help Afghanistan control the problem, particularly through greater controls at Kabul International Airport, and President Hamid Karzai's government pledged action within a year. But the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, which was set up by Congress to monitor the more than $89 billion in US non-military aid to the country since 2001, said that little had changed at the airport.
Inspectors on a recent visit found that bulk currency counters provided by the United States were not in use and not even connected to the Internet, as is necessary to transmit data. No bulk currency counters at all were available at the airport's VIP area, even though many of the passengers suspected of laundering were believed to go through it, the report said.
"The persistent delays in instituting basic anti-money laundering procedures... are deeply troubling," it said. While acknowledging that Afghanistan has a cash-based economy, the report said that basic controls were "particularly critical for a country fraught with corruption, narcotics trafficking and insurgent activity."
Despite renewed pledges at July's reconstruction conference in Tokyo to curb laundering, Afghanistan has raised the limit for cash that passengers are required to declare when exiting from $10,000 to $20,000, the report said. The report called for the United States to hold Afghanistan accountable and insist that it uses the bulk currency counters and subjects VIP passengers to customs screening. In a twice-a-year report to Congress on the Afghan war released on Monday, the Defence Department said that "endemic corruption" was one of the major risks for the country as US forces prepare to exit by the end of 2014.