Posted on 08/17/2021 10:25:20 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Biden administration on Sunday froze Afghan government reserves held in U.S. bank accounts, blocking the Taliban from accessing billions of dollars held in U.S. institutions, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The decision was made by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and officials in Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, the people said. The State Department was also involved in discussions this weekend, with officials in the White House monitoring the developments. An administration official said in a statement, “Any Central Bank assets the Afghan government have in the United States will not be made available to the Taliban.” The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss government policy not yet made public.
Cutting off access to U.S.-based reserves represents among the first in what is expected to prove several crucial decisions facing the Biden administration about the economic fate of that nation following the Taliban takeover. Afghanistan is already one of the poorest countries in the world and is highly dependent on American aid that is now in jeopardy. The Biden administration is also likely to face hard choices over how to manage existing sanctions on the Taliban, which may make it difficult to deliver international humanitarian assistance to a population facing ruin, experts say.
The Afghan central bank held $9.4 billion in reserve assets as of April, according to the International Monetary Fund. That amounts to roughly one third of the country’s annual economic output. The vast majority of those reserves are not currently held in Afghanistan, one of the people familiar with the matter said. Among those, billions of dollars are kept in the United States, although the precise amount is unclear.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
They’ll use it to buy Hunter’s paintings.
Taliban: “Hello, China. How much are you willing to pay for the mining rights here?”
They will probably use this as a negotiating tool to makeup for the disaster they created
Hostage ransom money....
Reserves? You mean our money they were previously gifted?
Well, here’s the Ransom Fund.
Yeah, do that before everyone is out.
Do that while there are still 10’s of thousands of Anericans there.
Idiots.
Sounds like a little too late.
How many billions of US arms did we leave behind? 30b?
That seems like a smart move with 10-40k Americans still stuck behind the Taliban perimeter.
It was probably the first thing they did.
That $$$ is gone.
Just like the billions we gave Yasser Arafat
Now we know the identity of the ‘anonymous buyers’
Really good the Taliban are the shot callers now. They can easily take hostages and China will be the new sugar daddy.
At some point they’ll deliver it on pallets loaded with cash. “After all, it’s Afghanistan’s money,” they’ll explain.
Didn’t Jimmy Carter freeze Iranian assets in the US when they took our hostages?
i’m sure it was an oversight to NOT to over these funds along with Bagram, before all Americans were out.
The Taliban can sell the American hostages Biden left behind on Ebay (God help the women!)
Maybe the white supremacists looking to overthrow the government can pick up an F-15 and a nuke Biden left behind.
Hostage money.
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