Karzai’s cousin operated company during his rule

ISLAMABAD: When Ahmed Ratab Popal sat with Taliban’s ambassador to Islamabad Mulla Abdul Zaeef in October 2001 as the latter’s interpreter during a press conference, nobody thought he would make headlines again in Pakistan, 16 years later.

Two years and five months after this press conference, he registered an offshore company in Bahamas. Popal chose to give the correspondence address of his residence in Islamabad, the city he homed after nine-year imprisonment in the US on heroin smuggling charges.

While he denied, during media interviews in the past, as supporter of Taliban and that he was only a friend of Mulla Zaeef, another strong reference of Popal is his link with former afghan president Hamid Karzai. They are the cousins.

The charges he faced for conspiring to smuggle heroin in the US is apart from the controversy he generated after Karzai government awarded his company a contract worth $3 billion for oil extraction.

Incidentally, the company remained operational for as many years as Karzai ruled Afghanistan. During his days with Mulla Zaeef, Popal used to have long beard that was cut to size as business flourished under his cousin’s government.

Since his name has appeared in the Bahamas record shared with The News by ICIJ, Popal is back in the headlines. In 2004, he established an offshore holding, Emaan Trading Limited, in this tax heaven. The address he mentioned in his correspondent address is of Golden Heights Apartments situated in Sector F-11, Islamabad.

The only other director of this company is his brother, Rashid Popal, whose correspondence address is of New York. Emaan Trading Limited was registered in 2004, months before Karzai took charge as Afghan president, and was dissolved a month before Karzai left the office in 2014.

Unlike Panama Papers that had detailed documents to offer, Bahamas data provides information only about corporate registry that shows the name of companies and its directors. Hence, there is no indication of any direct or indirect link of Karzai with it in connection with this company.

However, the mega contacts he received from Karazai government brought this relation under microscopic scrutiny. In 2009, Watan Oil and Gas, a company owned by Popal brothers, won the oil extraction contract in a joint venture with a Chinese state-owned firm amid accusations that their other companies used US funds to pay protection money to Taliban commanders, reported British newspaper, Daily Telegraph, on June 22, 2012.

Their Watan Group is a consortium engaged in telecommunications, logistics and the security. One of their subsidiaries, Watan Risk Management, used to provide security to supply convoys and was at the heart of a US Congressional investigation into protection companies paying the Taliban millions of dollars for safe passage. This company is one of the few dozen private security companies in Afghanistan. The Popal brothers then denied to Daily Telegraph paying off the Taliban, but officials attempted to block them from further US contracts.

Before setting up this business conglomerate, Popal was arrested in 1988 in the US on charges conspiring to import heroin only to release from prison in 1997, reported The Nation, an American newspaper with a headline, “How the US funds the Taliban.”

This was after his release from American jail that he settled in Pakistan. How long he remained here and whether F-11 apartment is still in his possession is only known to the eyes and ears of this country.