Speaking at a press conference to mark International Anti-Corruption Day, Karzai said foreign firms and donors operating in Afghanistan should inform anti-corruption workers if government ministers ask them for contracts.
“One urgent way to avoid corruption in Afghanistan is for our foreign friends and co-workers to stop giving contracts to government officials and their family members,” Karzai told the conference.
“Giving contracts to the Afghan government and their family members and government officials is corruption, cause for corruption, and encouraging corruption.”
The president’s own brother Mahmoud Karzai is a former shareholder in Kabulbank, which collapsed last year with outstanding loans of almost $1 billion, prompting an international scandal and a fraud probe. He denies any wrongdoing and is not under investigation in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is one of the world’s biggest aid recipients, receiving an estimated $16 billion this year. It relies on foreign aid for about 90 percent of its spending.
Azizullah Ludin, Director General of the Afghan High Office of Oversight and Anti-Corruption (HOO), said only about 18 percent of foreign aid that flows into the country was spent by the Afghan government, while the majority is used by overseas organizations working in Afghanistan.
“Corruption exists in big contracts that foreigners are involved in directly, that is undeniable,” he told delegates at the conference. “Misuse of big contracts over many years has polluted a large part of international assistance.”
Ludin admitted that corruption remained “rampant” in Afghanistan, and said the body he headed found it tough to make progress. “Currently the HOO is like a toothless lion, who with a lot of struggle can catch its prey, but has no power to bite,” he said. “All it can do is look at it.”
He said Afghanistan’s government would have to show strong political will to crack down on corruption, coupled with stricter law enforcement procedures to stop those with political influence escaping prosecution.
Ludin said large disparities in public sector wages, which can see officials trained overseas paid ten times as much as some of their colleagues, were harming attempts to combat graft in state institutions.
He added that he favors bringing all the country’s anti-graft investigators — currently spread across at least ten departments — under one umbrella, to create a united force for fighting corruption.
“The current system is scattered and dispersed in a way that is impractical in combating corruption, and means we cannot respond to our prevailing problems,” he said.
“Based on my view and international practices, all parallel administrations should be removed. There should be only a single but strong and committed institution to fight corruption.”
Earlier this month a survey by Berlin-based Transparency International rated Afghanistan one of the world’s worst countries for corruption, joint with Myanmar and only slightly ahead of North Korea and Somalia.
