Yesterday, Washington announced that it had set up a fund in Switzerland to manage the $3.5 billion in Afghan Central Bank assets that have been frozen in the United States since the Taliban took control of the country.
The new Geneva-based Afghan fund will take on central bank tasks like paying off Afghanistan’s arrears or paying for electricity imports, and could be tasked with other tasks like printing banknotes in the future, several senior US officials said. said. This decision was made after the failure of negotiations between the Taliban and the US administration to release the seven billion dollars frozen 13 months ago in the US.
In a letter to the Afghan Central Bank, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Wali Adeimo lamented that the Afghan establishment failed to demonstrate its independence from the Taliban, failed to fulfill its promise to fund the war on terrorism before coming to power, and appointed a credible outside observer. “Currently, there is no institution in Afghanistan that can guarantee that this money will only be used for the benefit of the Afghan people, even the Central Bank of Afghanistan,” Adebmo said.
The new Afghan fund will be set up in Geneva with a board of directors of four: two Afghan economists independent of the Taliban appointed by the United States, one representative of the US government and one representative of the Swiss government.
