Days after sanctioning two senior Taliban officials over human rights abuses, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions the former speaker of Afghanistan parliament, Rahman Rahmani and his son, Ajmal Rahmani, who was also a member of the house on charges of transnational corruption.
According to a statement issued by the Department of Treasury on Monday, December 11, the Rahmanis are sanctioned according to the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act because of their involvement in corruption and embezzlement in Afghanistan. The sanctions bar financial transactions with individuals and entities blocked and make their assets in the United States or in the control of American entities and citizens subject to confiscation.
The Rahmani family was one of the largest contractors of the US Army and the former government of Afghanistan. During the two decades of international involvement in Afghanistan, the Rahmanis were awarded contracts to procure fuel for the Afghanistan Security and Defense Forces (ANDSF), the funding for which came directly from the US Government. The US Government says the Rahmanis engaged in tactics to rig the bidding process and inflate fuel prices. In 2014, the Rahmanis and other companies involved in fuel business colluded to drive up prices in the US-funded contracts for as much as $200 million.
That, however, was not all of it. Despite securing over-priced contracts through corruption that benefited them handsomely, the Rahmanis also under-deliver on those contracts. At least in one year, their companies under-delivered at least 11 million litres of fuel to the Afghanistan government.
They also imported tax-free fuel more than the amount they were contracted for, which they sold in the private market. In 2017 and 2018, companies owned by the Rahmani family imported one billion litres of fuel tax-free while the total annual needs of the country’s security forces were 400 million litres. They were able to do this by bribing customs officials and producing fraudulent tax exemption letters from the country’s ministry of finance.
The Magnitsky Act was initially passed by the US Congress in 2012 to punish Russian officials responsible for the death of Sergei Magnitsky in prison in 2009. The Global Magnitsky Act of 2016 was a follow-up bill that allowed the US Government to sanction foreign nationals who engaged in human rights violations and corruption by freezing their assets, barring doing business and other transactions with them, and blocking them from entering the United States.
Many believe that the law has been under-utilized by the US Government. This is the first time the US Government sanctions a senior official in the former government of Afghanistan, which ruled from 2001 until 2021 with heavy reliance on international financial support, particularly from the United States.
During the republic’s government in Afghanistan, many of those involved in corruption and embezzlement held dual citizenship, particularly in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that senior members of former President Ashraf Ghani’s cabinet bought luxurious mansions in the United States in the final years of that government.
In addition to the Rahmanis and their holdings in Afghanistan, the OFAC sanctions cover dozens of foreign companies in Europe, the Middle East, and Austria, believed to be tied to the family. Among them are 23 German, eight Cypriot, six Emirati, two Austrian, one Dutch and one Bulgarian company.
The US Treasury Department alludes that in addition to the entities named, any other entity tied to the individuals blocked or controlled by them will also fall under the sanctions.
We were able to locate at least one legal entity in the United States that is linked to Ajmal Rahmani. The Afghanistan-US Democratic Peace and Prosperity Council is a U.S. non-profit registered in March 2020 in Delaware. According to its website, it is led by ‘reformers in Afghanistan’s Parliament-in-exile and Afghan-Americans who believe strongly in the benefits of an alliance between the people of Afghanistan and America.”
According to information released by the U.S. Department of Justice, the organization declared at the time of its incorporation that it was financed by Ajmal Rahmani and controlled by a man named Martin Rahmani who is listed as its Executive Director. Martin Amin Rahmani is an American citizen who is a partner at Victory Six Advisors, a consulting firm based in Washington D.C. The address listed for the council and Victory Six Advisors are the same, 800 Maine Ave, SW, Washington, DC.
The council had named at the time two other Afghan individuals as members of its board of advisors, Mir Haidar Afzaly and Naheed Farid, both of them members of the Afghanistan parliament at the time. Both individuals remain listed on the organization’s website. Mr. Afzaly was one of the participants of the recent meetings of anti-Taliban politicians in Vienna, Austria. The other, Ms. Naheed Farid resides in the United States and is a permanent resident. She is a fellow at the Afghanistan Policy Lab at Princeton University.
According to American officials, the sanctions are issued in close coordination with the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), which investigates the appropriation and expenditure of American aid in the country. SIGAR which is an independent congressionally-mandated body had repeatedly reported about corruption in American-funded projects in Afghanistan and their inability to leave a lasting impact on people’s lives.
The Rahmanis began making their fortune from procuring small commodities for the US forces stationed at the Bagram Airbase, the largest compound housing American troops in Afghanistan. The family is originally from the area around the base, north of Kabul. In the early days of post-2001 Afghanistan, Rahman Rahmani’s brother, Baba Jan, was a powerful commander of the Northern Alliance in the area. He was later promoted to the rank of General and rose to prominence and power as the regional police commander in the north and Kabul’s chief of police. Rahman Rahmani also held lower-level military positions, which included maintaining security in the areas around the Bagram Airbase.
The family came to public light in 2018 after both the father and son ran in parliamentary elections. Many observers noted at the time the influx of businessmen turned politicians in the electoral race, which brought about a parliament driven by personal interest and corruption. The election was considered one of the most fraudulent contests in the country’s short history of fragile flirtation with democratic ideas. The Rahmanis not only made it to the house, but the father soon became the speaker in a process that was believed to be corrupt. OFAC now confirms those suspicions, reporting that Rahmani paid millions of dollars to other parliament members to secure their vote in the house. According to OFAC, Ajmal Rahmani, the son, paid at least $1.6 million to members of the election commission to win a seat in the elections.
According to our information, Mr. Rahmani, the father, resides in Turkey, where he has major business holdings. Social media pictures also show him at COP28, the annual UN conference on climate change that is ongoing in Dubai, the UAE. His son, Ajmal Rahmani, has lived mostly in Germany since leaving Afghanistan after the Taliban’s return to power in the summer of 2021.
