Corrupt United Nations officials in Afghanistan have stolen U.S. assistance by demanding bribes to allow the aid money to flow, an American inspector general charged Wednesday.

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said senior U.N. officials “personally profit” from the influx of assistance flowing into the troubled nation by taking advantage of a persistent pay-to-play culture.

Ten people, including a current U.N. official and a former official, confirmed the bribes.

The U.N. officials connect those with the money to the organizations that deliver the services. It’s those nongovernmental organizations that pay the bribes to win the contracts.

Several people reported that the U.N. officials were collaborating with the Taliban, the fundamentalist sect that took control of the Afghan government in 2021. That includes payments and, in some cases, demands that Taliban officials or their relatives be added as shareholders or board members of the nongovernmental organizations.

One outcome is that aid goes most heavily to areas favored by the Taliban rather than “the neediest.”

“Interviewees told SIGAR that UN officials demand bribes from companies and NGOs seeking contracts from their agencies. They said that these are calculated as a percentage of the contract at stake, with estimates varying between 5 and 50 percent,” the inspector general said in a report.

One former Afghan government official said the bigger the contract, the more senior the U.N. official who needs to be bribed.

One director of a nongovernmental organization said 70% of U.N. contracts in Afghanistan required payments. The World Food Program, a major U.N. player, accounted for “most” of the allegations, but the inspector general said it also collected reports about eight other U.N. divisions.

Those findings were part of a broader report looking at how the Taliban have managed to funnel American money intended to help the country’s downtrodden residents into their own projects.

A spokesperson for the U.N. secretary-general, in response to an email from The Washington Times linking to the report, said they hadn’t “seen the report here in NY.” They referred inquiries to U.N. operations in Afghanistan, where it was after midnight.

The World Food Program didn’t respond to an inquiry.

U.N. corruption was one of several hurdles for the U.S. as it tried to deliver assistance to Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover.

President Trump suspended most foreign assistance, including to Afghanistan, but the audit said it offered lessons if the U.S. wants to restart the money.

Acting Inspector General Gene Aloise said the lessons apply to aid to other places with hostile governments, such as the Gaza Strip, Sudan and Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.

Investigators found several troubling factors in Afghanistan, including the Taliban diverting U.S. money intended for the needy to go to their own aims.

The money is sometimes siphoned to the Taliban’s preferred groups, and other times it involves direct extortion.

The inspector general said a “culture of denial within the international aid community” enables the Taliban to get away with it.

Though U.S. assistance to Afghanistan fell substantially below what it was during the 20-year war-and-rebuilding effort, the U.S. remained the largest supporter even after the Taliban took over.

The allegations track somewhat similar U.N. behavior in Iraq, where The Guardian reported that U.N. Development Program staff took kickbacks in its Funding Facility for Stabilization program. The U.S. was the largest donor to the stabilization fund at the time.

In Afghanistan, the inspector general said the United Nations and some nongovernmental organizations with which the U.S. does business paid Taliban operatives to provide security for their offices and to act as armed escorts as their vehicles roamed the country.

The inspector general said security payments are a “controversial” idea, pointing to a situation in Sudan where U.N. payments helped build a resistance movement that ended up supporting coups and attacks on the government.

“The U.N. now needs to be protected from the very group they used to pay to protect them,” the inspector general said.

Mr. Aloise said one of the whistleblowers who spoke to investigators, an employee of a nongovernmental organization, was killed for exposing how the Taliban diverted food aid to their training camps.

The report said every nongovernmental organization that receives money takes a cut for its operations, which makes it imperative that the U.S. try to eliminate as many pass-throughs as possible when sending assistance.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Mary Bischoping, in an official response to the audit, said the department didn’t agree with all the allegations and findings in the report but worried that the Taliban were benefiting from U.S. aid.

That, she said, has been stopped by Mr. Trump’s orders.

“The department is committed to ensuring every dollar spent on U.S. foreign assistance makes America safer, stronger or more prosperous,” she said.

Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Mr. Trump’s moves over the past months may have made it easier to misdirect U.S. foreign assistance.

“I welcome oversight that strengthens U.S. programs, but the Trump administration’s reckless dismantling of USAID gutted safeguards to keep U.S. aid out of Taliban hands,” he said.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.