Originally published at: Fleeing Afghan president's helicopter was too small to fit all his money so he could only take $169 million | Boing Boing
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Note to self: If I become the ruler of a failing state, start looking into crypto.
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Fleeing Afghan president’s helicopter was too small to fit all his money so he could only take $169 million
As a US taxpayer, I’d really like to know if that’s actually MY money.
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Benjamin Franklin is a human, so Dubai isn’t technically lying.
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This is like the scene near the end of countless action movies where the greedy villain desperately tries to pack his pockets with as many riches as possible instead of fleeing the chaos unfolding around him and ends up getting eaten by the monster/crushed in the collapsing treasure chamber/sinking to the bottom of the ocean as a result.
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And yet you will be literally questioned by TSA and potentially arrested at a US airport if you try to board a plane with a couple thousand (or less) in cash despite nothing being illegal about it. The system works!
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He should have exchanged his USD for real Euros a long time ago. There are still €500 bills, and they are still €200 bills, with which it should be possible to fit a lot more value into the same space and/or weight.
It’s a great shame €500 bills are being phased out. They are really handy in situations like this.
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They gave Mr President some to grease the larger operation, methinks.
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Aren’t off-shore bank accounts easier to deal with?
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Yes, and THAT kind of “state secret” is what TPTB really want to punish Assange for.
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I suspect Afghan taxpayers may feel the same.
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Also to make an example of him and show what happens if one tries to interfere with their larceny.
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Only what was left on the tarmac.
Only what made it into the helicopter.
Technically the US still has some larger bills, but they are for “interbank transfer only”, and since we do nearly all of that via wire now nobody has printed new $500/$1000 for a long time.
That is kind of what I thought. Maybe he has that too & this is only his “rainy day” money? Like he could part with as much of it as is needed to get into another country… sad thought, but not even in the top 1000 for Afghanistan.
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To put this into perspective, this is less than what we spent on the Afghan war per day.
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“as he deserted his people”
The one thing I can’t blame him for is leaving - he and his family would have been dead within hours had he stayed, and for what?
You know it’s reality and not fiction when he not only keeps (most of) the money, but it actually does allow him to avoid the disaster.
Which makes me wonder about the truth of this story. Why cash? He’s the president of a country. Unless he has the offshore bank account and had hundreds of millions of dollars of cash lying around as well…
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That’s a very specific number, and I’m having trouble finding the source for that claim. It’s not at all unlikely that he did flee the country with so much cash that he couldn’t fit it all in the helicopter (which is what Russian state media is claiming, vaguely attributing “witnesses” as their source) but how many people would possibly be in a position to know that he took exactly $169M? That’s not just a rough estimate. It suggests that someone did a count. Given the chaos of the departure and the report that some money was left behind on the tarmac I’d be impressed if even Ghani himself would know exactly how much money he had, down to the nearest million.
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At least it’s not in an endlessly traveling shipping container. Or is it?
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My initial thought “does this count as first world problems or third world problems?”
My next thought “corrupt leader absconds with all the cash. . . same as it ever was.”
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Everything you would ever need to know about Afghanistan in one headline.
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I wonder if he has watched the movie Triple Frontier. There the guys stealing the money ignored the helicopter pilot’s warning that they should leave some of the money because of the weight. Physics can be a b!tch.
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