Afghan government officials helped smugglers illegally take hundreds of millions of dollars out of the country in the final months as the Taliban took control, Business Insider reported on Tuesday.

U.S.-backed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani knew about the problem but did nothing to stop it, according to internal government documents and former officials. 

Documents obtained by Business Insider show that $59.7 million in cash and gold was transferred illegally from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan during the first three months of 2021, as the U.S. considered withdrawing its forces, while from May 2019 to May 2020, the total was $824 million.

Much of the money, documents show, was headed for the United Arab Emirates, where top Afghan officials would flee to when their government collapsed later that year. 

The documents accuse Mirza Mohammad Katawazai, the former deputy speaker of Afghanistan's Parliament, of overseeing the smuggling ring, along with a network of Afghan intelligence officials, border guards, and port officials. 

Even as the U.S. publicly touted the durability of Ghani in the first months of 2021 and continued to give his government billions of dollars, privately they were expressing concern about government corruption. The Afghan government almost immediately collapsed when the U.S. withdrew its armed forces in August. 

Although the corruption plaguing the Afghan government was no secret at the time, what the documents obtained by Business Insider show is its vast scale and the lack of action by Ghani, who had the best chance to stop it.

Ghani currently resides in the United Arab Emirates, where he set up a temporary headquarters in the luxury suite of a 5-star hotel, The Wall Street Journal reported.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson acknowledged to Business Insider that "endemic corruption across multiple Afghan administrations" contributed to the Taliban's takeover.

"Since 2002, the United States consistently stressed to the Afghan government the importance of combating corruption, raising these concerns frequently at the highest levels of the Afghan government," although the spokesperson declined to address these particular allegations.

According to The Wall Street Journal, in addition to Ghani, others in his inner circle appeared to have prospered during their time in power, with the Journal reporting in June that the former president's ministers were snapping up rental properties in California and villas in the UAE. 

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