Afghan Ajmal Rahmani (Haji Ajmal Rahmani Mir Rahman), who, in addition to Bulgarian citizenship, also has passports of Belgium, Cyprus, St. Kitts and Nevis, and whom BIRD informed in December 2023 that he was sanctioned for corruption by the United States under the Global Magnitsky Act, is one of those revealed in the new international investigation “Unlocked Dubai“. Ajmal, owner of the Bulgarian company “Lego Investments“, is the son of the former speaker of the parliament of Afghanistan Mir Rahman Rahmani, also sanctioned for corruption.
While billions of dollars have flowed into Afghanistan’s reconstruction since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, many contractors have been accused of siphoning reconstruction funds. Today, some of them own luxury properties in Dubai.
- Former Afghan Parliament Speaker Mir Rahman Rahmani and his son Ajmal Rahmani have spent more than $15 million for real estate in Dubai. In emailed replies to questions, the Rahmani family rejected U.S. accusations that they profited from a corrupt fuel supply contract.
- Their ownership includes numerous apartments and villas, as well as two high-rise buildings that generate millions in rental income each year.
- The leaked data reveals at least three other contractors who have been embroiled in scandals surrounding U.S. public procurement contracts in Afghanistan, also owning real estate in Dubai.
The former speaker of Afghanistan’s parliament and his son, who were sanctioned late last year for allegedly embezzling U.S. government aid, own millions of dollars worth of luxury real estate in Dubai, property records reveal.
Mir Rahman Rahmani and his son Ajmal are pouring at least $15.2 million into properties in the glamorous Gulf city, including two residential high-rise buildings and two large villas in The Meadows, an exclusive suburban complex with tennis courts and swimming pools.
The revelation comes just months after Rahmani was hit with U.S. Treasury Department sanctions, accusing them of siphoning millions of dollars from U.S. reconstruction funds in the years between the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and their widespread comeback 20 years later. (The Rahmani family is challenging the sanctions in a lawsuit filed against the U.S. government on Jan. 31.)
The sanctions notice published in December 2023 also blocked dozens of international companies that Ajmal Rahmani owns or controls as part of an “international corporate network”. The Treasury Department did not mention where the Rahmani family invested the profits from the business. An investigation by OCCRP, Lighthouse Reports and Etilaat Roz found that they bought real estate in Dubai during and after the period in which the US alleges it was involved in corruption in Afghanistan.
At least two of the U.S.-listed firms have been used to build large apartment complexes in Dubai, Ocean Residencia and Fern Heights, which contain a total of 228 units generating more than $2 million in rental revenue each year, according to leases obtained by OCCRP.
In Germany, land registry documents show that six firms owned by Ajmal Rahmani own real estate worth at least 197 million euros ($212 million), according to a new report by OCCRP partner ZDF frontal. (В писмен отговор на въпроси Аджмал Рахмани каза, че “не може да потвърди тази сума.”)
Turning to Dubai, Rahmani is becoming part of a larger trend. OCCRP and more than 70 international partners cooperating in the investigation “Unlocked Dubai“ found that the United Arab Emirates is a key destination for politicians, sanctioned people and criminal figures from all over the world.
The Persian Gulf city is far from the only place where criminals and others have successfully hidden their wealth in luxury properties. Real estate in New York and London is also known to attract dirty money. But Dubai offers a particularly favorable climate for individuals who want to launder illegal money through property purchases.
Leaked property records show that other Afghan contractors involved in alleged corruption schemes have also acquired real estate in Dubai. Among them are Rashid Popal, whose private security firm was incriminated by a congressional investigation in 2010 of using U.S. reconstruction funds to pay bribes to Taliban fighters and other extremists, as well as government security forces monitoring checkpoints along supply routes.
Another former performer, Saeed Ismail Amiri, a California resident who was convicted who was sentenced to 15 months in prison for participating in a scheme to defraud the Afghan government of more than $100 million, also owns a villa in The Meadows worth about $1.6 million, records show. He did not respond to a request for comment.
Stephen Orenstein, director of the company Supreme Group, which, together with its subsidiaries, was fined with $434 million and entered into an agreement with the US government to over-invoice the military mission in Afghanistan for food and water, owns a villa in the Emirates Hills complex, also called the “Beverly Hills of Dubai” and includes two golf clubs. Orenstein said through a representative that he no longer owns the villa and that no money from U.S. contracts was used to purchase the property.
U.S. government auditors say billions of dollars of U.S. reconstruction funds have been stolen or misused during two decades of Western intervention in the war-torn country.
The colossal scale of the theft “undermined faith in international reconstruction efforts” and diverted funds to “bribery, fraud, blackmail and nepotism, as well as empowering violent warlords and their militias,” the special inspector general for reconstruction of Afghanistan noted in a 2016 report.
Much of that money quickly makes its way to Dubai — a comfortable three-hour flight from Kabul and with a brilliant construction boom ready to accommodate huge cash flows.
“We’ve heard stories of people showing up with suitcases full of money and buying blocks of apartments in the Emirates,” said Graham Smith, senior analyst for Afghanistan at the International Crisis Group.
A Critical Year
By 2014, optimism about foreign intervention in Afghanistan quickly faded as the country was shaken by a growing Taliban insurgency. Disputed elections in the same year put Afghanistan on the brink of another violent civil conflict that was averted only by a power-sharing agreement between rival presidential candidates.
It was also the period when the Rahmani family allegedly conspired with other families to artificially raise the price of fuel under U.S.-funded contracts worth more than $200 million, according to the U.S. sanctions notice. The father and son also devised other tactics to increase their profits, including non-delivery of part of the fuel and fraudulent imports and sale of excise-free fuel, the sanctions notice said.
In their lawsuit against the U.S. government, Rahmani said they “categorically deny any involvement in corruption in the supply of fuel.”
“Our legal team is prepared and has substantial evidence proving that the said $200 million fuel corruption allegation is unfounded and is not related to us or any of our subsidiaries,” Ajmal Rahmani added in an email to reporters.
His father denied being involved in the fuel business.
“I have neither had any fuel contracts, nor have I done any such business with the United States, NATO, or any contract with the Afghan governments,” Mir Rahmani wrote in a separate email.
Also in 2014, Ajmal Rahmani became a citizen of Cyprus, obtaining a passport through the country’s European Union citizenship by investment program, after paying €2.5 million for a villa there.
That same year, Ocean Estate Company Ltd. — a UAE-registered company owned by Ajmal Rahmani — began developing an apartment complex on a plot of land in Dubai that was reportedly purchased for $2.9 million in June 2013.
The land on which Ocean Residencia was built was sold to an unknown buyer earlier this year following US sanctions. However, the leases examined by OCCRP show that Ocean Estate Company Ltd. still owns the 110 separate units in the building, generating an estimated annual rental income of $1.3 million.
The company also owns sixteen residential units in another apartment complex, Axis Residences. And through another Emirati company, The Fern Limited, Ajmal Rahmani owns the Fern Heights building, which contains 118 units, some of which are also rented out and bring in about $800,000 a year.
The land for the project was purchased in December 2016 for $4.04 million, and construction of the building began in 2018 – the same year both father and son took part in the election campaign in Afghanistan’s parliamentary elections.
Mir Rahmani was first elected to parliament in 2010 and says on his website that he has fought forces opposed to the Taliban since 1996 and helped US forces invade Afghanistan in 2001. Reuters reports. На своя уебсайт Аджмал Рахмани казва също, че е бил в бизнеса с горива и “се е впуснал в пазара на недвижими имоти в ОАЕ, като е започнал с малки придобивания и е изградил портфолиото си”.
“Sudden” millionaires and billionaires
Both father and son are vying in 2019 for seats in parliament after the 2018 election, which was plagued by multiple delays and widespread allegations of fraud.
In its sanctions notice, the U.S. Treasury Department alleges that Ajmal Rahmani paid $1.6 million to members of the Afghan election commission to inflate his results “by thousands of votes,” and that Mir Rahman Rahmani “paid millions of dollars” to fellow politicians to buy his way to the parliamentary presidency. From there, it is alleged that they used their official positions to further manipulate government procurement.
In the lawsuit they filed against the U.S. government on Jan. 31, both men say they won their election fairly and accuse the Treasury Department of making “unfounded, blanket allegations” against them that are “false and inadequate under the law” and should be overturned.
Judge Rudolph Contreras of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed large portions of Rahmani’s appeal on April 19, including efforts to lift the sanctions pending the outcome of the case. The judge rejected their request for an immediate freeze on sanctions and rejected numerous challenges to the authorities of the Ministry of Finance.
In response to a request for comment, Ajmal Rahmani said the court had “issued a decisive decision in our favour”, adding that they planned to challenge aspects of the case that had been dismissed.
Experts say Afghan elites have been involved in endemic corruption as private contractors, responsible for everything from building schools to protecting convoys.
Between the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the withdrawal of troops in 2021, Washington spent about $141 billion on efforts to stabilize and rebuild the country, according to the government’s Office of Federal Expenditure Accountability, which is subordinate to Congress.
The large volume of funds that are poured into the country, combined with the challenges of checking contractors and subcontractors, create a system favorable for exploitation.
“Over the past 20 years, millionaires and billionaires have suddenly appeared in Afghanistan,” said an Afghan anti-corruption expert who lives in Afghanistan and asked not to be named because of security concerns.
“Those who have been awarded contracts are often parliamentarians, ministers or persons closely associated with high-ranking government officials, including parliamentarians, ministers, vice presidents or the president,” the expert added.
A vicious circle of compromises
Among the well-connected Afghans is Rashid Popal, whose cousin, Hamid Karzai, was president from 2002 to 2014.
Popal is a co-owner of Watan Risk Management, a powerful Afghan firm described in a 2010 U.S. congressional report as “the primary private security provider and broker for the U.S. supply chain in Afghanistan.”
The report, “Warlord, Inc.,” examined $2.2 billion in contracts paid to transportation delivery firms and security firms tasked with transporting supplies to U.S. troops across the country, often in remote or dangerous areas. The contractors, including Watan Risk Management, were found to have used U.S. taxpayer dollars to pay Taliban commanders and other fighters, as well as government security forces, on a regular basis, in exchange for safe passage of the convoys they guard.
It’s a vicious circle — paying the Taliban to supply troops fighting the Taliban — that makes corruption and compromise inevitable for security firms like Watan, according to the report “Warlord, Inc.,” whose findings painted a damning portrait of how U.S. supply efforts are structured.
“What we’re saying is not that these guys are doing anything wrong,” said attorney Scott Lindsay, who served as the investigation’s general counsel. “We’re saying the whole fucking design is fundamentally wrong.”
Rashid Popal denied the allegations of congressional investigators that he was paying the Taliban.
Leaked property data shows that one year after the publication of the doll Warlord, Inc., Popal bought an office in the luxurious Jumeirah Bay Tower. He also currently owns a villa at Jumeirah Golf Estates. Although the data does not indicate when he bought it, similar villas have sold for the equivalent of $3.8 million in the past six months.
Rashid Popal did not respond to emails sent to two addresses that appear in documents related to his companies.
Destination Dubai
Experts from Afghanistan say they are not surprised that contractors profiting from 20 years of US funding have chosen to buy properties in Dubai.
In 2022, Dubai’s luxury residential property market ranked fourth globally, behind Los Angeles, New York and London, according to Knight Frank, an international property consultancy group.
In the same year, the UAE was added to the “grey list” of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental anti-money laundering watchdog. (Removed from the list this year after the task force found that the UAE had improved its anti-money laundering measures.)
“Dubai has become a kind of back office for the legal and illegal sides of the war,” said Graham Smith of the International Crisis Group, adding that rumours abound in Kabul of money flows to the UAE.
John Tierney, a former Democratic congressman from Massachusetts who played a key role in the Warlord, Inc. report, says congressional hearings have revealed a significant flow of funds from Afghanistan to Dubai.
“There was an incident where they just had pallets with money stacked on them and wrapped in cellophane” says Tierney, who now heads the Center for Gun Control and Nonproliferation in Washington. They put them on planes and took them out.”
For ordinary Afghans, bribery is so widespread that it extends to everyday transactions and steadily weakens any remaining trust in their government.
An expert on fighting corruption in Afghanistan says he believes efforts to tackle fraud and corrupt politicians have been thwarted by Western advisers who say it is important to maintain the “little political stability” existing in the country.
“That was the excuse. To maintain this fragile political stability, we need to retain these corrupt officials “, said the expert. And what happened on August 15, 2021” – the day of the dramatic takeover of Kabul by the Taliban and the unfortunate withdrawal of US troops – “this is the direct result”.
Smith agrees that bribes have played a major role in the Taliban’s dramatic resurgence after two decades of nation-building.
“Corruption was at the heart of the failure of the Western project in Afghanistan,” says Graham Smith.
#DubaiUnlockedReporting by Jessica Purkiss (Lighthouse Reports), Fahim Abed (Lighthouse Reports), Kevin G. Hall (OCCRP), and Andreas Cosma (OCCRP). Additional studies and research by Dan Mika (OCCRP), Jared Ferrie (OCCRP), Zaki Daryabi (Etilaat Roz), and Zack Kopplin (Government Accountability Project)
Comment from the editors of BIRD:
BIRD.BG also participated in the previous international journalistic project called “The Dubai Revelations”. It became clear that more than 240 Bulgarian citizens and residents of Bulgaria own properties worth over $ 160 million in Dubai. The most famous among them are Irena Krasteva – the mother of the MP Delyan Peevski, the construction boss Veliko Zhelev, the sister of the Deputy Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov, the builder of our pavilion for Expo 2020 in Dubai Ralitsa Ivanova, Sisters Gergana Simova и Elitsa Proshenska, The Underground Boss Radostin Barzanov – Rado The Sun, an aver of Taki and Vasil Iliev and the owners of First Investment Bank (FIB), Tseko Minev and Ivaylo Mutafchiev.
The publications from the series “The Dubai Revelations” provoked inspections by the NRA, which ended with a measly result, if you do not count the fact that the head of the NRA himself, Rumen Spetsov, also acquired a property there for more than 1 million euros. Lv. In the new data from the “Unlocked Dubai” investigation, new names of famous Bulgarians appear, which we will inform about in separate publications in the coming days and weeks.
Lead collage: James O’Brien/OCCRP, BIRD.BG
Translation: BIRD.BG
Отключеният Дубай: Как мръсните пари намират дом в недвижими имоти в Дубай
Материалът An Afghan with a Bulgarian passport and sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act for corruption accumulates properties in Dubai е публикуван за пръв път на BIRD.
