The National Security Agency (NSA) has been conducting electronic surveillance of a brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai as part of a corruption investigation into his business dealings in Afghanistan, US officials said.
The NSA’s wiretapping of Mahmoud Karzai, an older brother of the president, appears to be part of a larger criminal investigation now under way by federal prosecutors in New York, according to the officials, who declined to be identified by name discussing a criminal inquiry.
Mahmoud Karzai, who ran restaurants in the US before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is widely seen as one of the most powerful and well-connected business leaders in Kabul. He has been criticized in Afghanistan for taking advantage of his status as the president’s brother to engage in insider dealing in real estate, cement and other industries, and he has angered powerful officials in the Afghan army by developing a lucrative residential real estate project on thousands of hectares of valuable land in Kandahar that the army claims to own.
His role as an investor in Kabul Bank, Afghanistan’s largest commercial bank — which was taken over by the country’s central bank late last month because of concerns about heavy losses — has brought increased scrutiny to his activities in both Washington and Kabul.
The NSA wiretapping of Karzai in Afghanistan has been under way for at least several months, during a time when the crisis at the Kabul Bank was worsening.
The US has created investigative teams with the Afghan government to fight corruption in the country, but the investigation of Karzai by federal prosecutors in New York appears to have been kept separate from that joint effort.
While the new joint unit against corruption in Kabul has its own wiretapping capability, the fact that the NSA has been involved in conducting surveillance of Karzai underscores the secrecy and sensitivity surrounding the investigation.
Gerald Posner, a lawyer for Mahmoud Karzai, said on Monday that Karzai had not been contacted or interviewed by the FBI or the Justice Department and had not been told that he was the subject of an investigation.
A spokeswoman for the US Justice Department declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal first reported on Monday that prosecutors had opened an inquiry into Karzai. Posner said that Karzai had canceled a planned trip to the US.
The inquiry comes at an awkward time in the relationship between the administration of US President Barack Obama and the government of Hamid Karzai. For months, the White House openly criticized Karzai for tolerating widespread corruption that undermined the credibility of his government at a time when the US was pouring more troops into Afghanistan.
Recently, however, the administration has begun to back off its anti-corruption campaign out of a growing sense in Washington that it was having little effect other than to antagonize Hamid Karzai and his political circle.
Until recently, another of Hamid Karzai’s brothers, Ahmed Wali Karzai, received far more public scrutiny than Mahmoud Karzai. Ahmed Wali Karzai, the chairman of the provincial council of Kandahar, who is widely considered to be the political boss of southern Afghanistan, has been accused of benefiting from narcotics trafficking, and US officials have said that he also has had a longstanding relationship with the CIA.
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