Where Did Afghanistan’s $18 Billion Go? An Investigation into Corruption

What happened to the $18 billion invested by the international community to help rebuild Afghanistan, develop schools and hospitals and to eradicate the opium trade? In 2009 journalist Paul Moreira visited Kabul to find out. Remarkably, he discovers that, eight years after the fall of the Talibans, no schools had been built and the hospital is falling apart. In the district of Shirpour, the poor have been expropriated to make way for sumptuous palaces. Corrupt government officials benefit from the heroin trade, which continues to flourish. All this feeds the Taliban propaganda and significantly boosts the spread of insurgency.

“Afghanistan: on the dollar trail” selected for “The Investigative Film Week” festival. Paul Moreira’s enquiry into Afghanistan’s corruption was selected by the Center for Investigative Journalism in 2010. It was screened along with five other films in the Oliver Thompson Theatre at London’s City University. The CIJ is a foundation dedicated to Anglo-American investigative journalism. Advisers include American Lowell Bergman of PBS, John Pilger or Michael Gavshon of CBS’s 60 Minutes. The first edition of the festival chose six films from all of those produced around the world to highlight each in their own way an example of film investigation.

“Afghanistan, on the dollar trail” won the Investigation Prize, at FIGRA 2010, the International Festival for General News Reporting and Social Documentaries.