UN unable to use its $135M in Afghanistan bank due to Taliban's ban of foreign currency

The United Nations has about $135 million in the bank in Afghanistan but is unable to use it because the Taliban-run central bank cannot convert it to the afghani currency, a senior UN official said on Thursday.

Report informs, citing Reuters, that Abdallah al Dardari, head of the UN Development Programme in Afghanistan, said the United Nations had taken the US dollars into the country and deposited it with the Afghanistan International Bank "with a clear promise from the central bank that fresh cash will be automatically converted to afghanis."

"This did not happen," he told the ACAMS Global Sanctions Space Summit, adding that UNDP itself has "$30 million stuck at AIB that I cannot convert to afghanis and without afghanis as you can imagine, we cannot implement all our programs."

The Taliban, who seized power in August, banned the use of foreign currency in a country where US dollars were common.