KABUL - Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA), in a report released on Saturday, said that 267 billion afghanis not originally accounted for in the annual approved budgets was allocated to emergency funds—such as Code 91 and Code 92-- over the past decade.
148 billion afghanis of that amount was used during the last five years of the National Unity Government (NUG) under president Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah.
According to the report, in the five years prior to the establishment of the National Unity Government, 119 billion additional afghanis was allocated to these codes.
Codes 91 and 92 are two emergency funds within the government budget that cannot be accessed except by the president’s order. The Presidential Palace and Ministry of Finance have been under scrutiny for channeling money into and out of these funds in order to avoid scrutiny or expenditures.
“Based on Article 32 of the Public Expenditure Law, the maximum use of emergency codes should be around three percent, but the government never adered to this three percent limit over the past ten years—in fact it was increased by 20 percent,” said Nasir Taimoori, a researcher at Integrity Watch Afghanistan.
In a reaction to the report, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Finance said the use of the emergency codes was based on needs.
“All changes and amendments that are brought by the Ministry of Finance to the budget plan--and all other codes—are, first, legally authorized, second, done on the basis of necessity, and, third, to avoid stagnation of the money and to take care of other administrative issues,” said Shamroz Khan Masjidi, a spokesman for the Ministry of Finance.
This comes after members of the Afghan parliament last month said that the government spent 2.6 billion afghanis from Code 91 this year, but only 1 billion afghanis was originally allocated by the fiscal budget.
“Are we implementing Article 89? It means that a special commission should be formed to oversee the actions of the government, the Ministry of Finance and other ministries. Or, do we instead implement Article 69 so that we can start the process of trial of Ghani and Abdullah?” asked MP Ramazan Bashardost.
“Voting was held on eight items and they were all approved with a majority of votes. It was decided to refer those people to the legal authorities who were in some way violating the law, including parts of the Ministry of Finance and all other people involved,” said Zal Mohammad Zalmay, a member of the Afghan parliament. 
Earlier, the Afghan parliament’s budget and finance commission found excess expenditures, and this came after a December 18 statement by members of the Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of the Afghan parliament, who said they are concerned about the increase of money in Code 91, an emergency fund, which they say is spent on unnecessary projects.
The budget allocated for the Code 91 last year was around 1.3 billion afghanis, but the Ministry of Finance, by the order of the president and by amending other codes, increased the overall expenses from the code to 3.2 billion afghanis. (TOLO NEWS)