U.S. Inspector General reports confirm CorpWatch story on Afghan power plant

Three independent investigations have confirmed a CorpWatch investigation into a $305 million USAID project to build a diesel-fueled power plant in Kabul (See the original article here: "Black & Veatch's Tarakhil Power Plant: White Elephant in Kabul")

Two of the reports were published in mid-January by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (http://www.sigar.mil/audit/Reports.aspx). You can also download the reports from CorpWatch's website - the one (link) examines the specific power plant and the second one (link) at the broader problems for the Afghan electricity sector. A third report (link) was published earlier by the USAID Inspector General that comes to the same conclusions.

An updated news story on the original report was published on Inter Press Service (link to CorpWatch post of IPS story).

Notably the three reports do not address the issue of nepotism within the Afghan government. For more on how the family of the vice-president of Afghanistan profited from the electricity sector project, see this related story: "Paying Off the Warlords."

In follow up to our August 2009 story, Jack Currie, the project manager for Black & Veatch's Tarakhil power plant, wrote CorpWatch to say that the repair of Qudas plant in Iraq was doomed from the start because "drawings and manuals were mostly all lost in the war. Despite having no documents, we managed to get these units running."

• 21 Reconstruction
• 187 Privatization