Taliban will not be able to access most Afghan central bank assets

I had blogged earlier on how the first thing Nazis did after invasion was to take over the central bank. After all that is where the money is.

Given Taliban’s yet another invasion of Afghan, will they be able to do the same?

Apparently not. There are articles on why Taliban will not get much of Afghan central bank assets.

For instance, see this BBC article by Daniel Thomas:

Any central bank assets the Afghan government has in the US will not be made available to the Taliban, a Biden administration official has told the BBC.

Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB) has reserves of roughly $9bn (£6.5bn), most of which is held in America. Shipments of dollars, international loans and aid are also in doubt after the militants took control.

DAB’s former governor warned the Afghan economy could nosedive. Ajmal Ahmady, who was forced to flee the country on the weekend, tweeted that DAB’s total reserves were approximately $9bn as of last week. But he said as per international standards, most of this was held in safe, liquid assets such as US Treasury bonds and gold offshore.

Ronal Manly the keen watcher of gold at central banks writes:

Not for the first time, the US Treasury has just gone and frozen the US held assets of Afghanistan’s central bank, the Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB).

Chief among these assets are 1731 old gold bars (just less than 22 tonnes) supposedly stored in the gold vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in Manhattan under 33 Liberty Street.

These 1,731 gold bars (if they even still exist) were deposited with the Fed by the Afghan central bank in 1939, and are old US Assay Office gold bars that have cracks, fissures, holes and other imperfections. See details below.

While the US Treasury has not yet released an official statement on blocking the Afghan central bank assets, the Washington Post on Tuesday 17 August broke the story that a few days previously on Sunday 15 August, the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Treasury department under the direction of Janet Yellen had made the decision to execute the freeze.

Among central banks of the world, the DAB has always been one of the more transparent when it comes to divulging information about it’s gold reserve holdings, and looking at the DAB’s annual financial statements, you can see why.

Lots more in the Manley piece..

Amazing how America which creates all these troubles at the first place remains the preferred place for financial safety.

Advertisement