Documents seen by TOLOnews reveal that the acting Minister of Finance--and top adviser to President Ashraf Ghani-- Mohammad Humayon Qayoumi, received a $255,000 salary from a private institute in the US in 2017.
 
A year earlier, in 2016, Mr. Qayoumi received a $105,000 salary from the institute, the US-based Institute For State Effectiveness, while he was serving as Ghani’s top advisor.  
 
The documents show that the Institute for State Effectiveness was founded by President Ashraf Ghani in  2013.
 
Also according to the documents, in recent years the Institute for State Effectiveness and the Afghan government worked together on several projects which increased the income of the institute.
 
The institute’s earning ratio shows that it increased threefold every year since  2016.
 
Officials from Integrity Watch Afghanistan stated that their agency has not received answers to their questions about the institute, nor questions about how it operates with the Afghan Ministry of Finance.
 
“Our queries about the Institute For State Effectiveness have been unanswered and there is no clear transparency on how the Institute works in the Ministry of Finance and in the Afghan Government,” said Naser Taimoori, an IWA researcher in Kabul.
 
"The National Unity Government, particularly the Arg (presidential palace) branch has been unwilling to fight or curb systematic corruption," said Shabeer Bashiri, an economist. He went on to say that, "On the contrary, it has been one of the causes for all these episodes that are against the national interests of the country."
 
A number of lawmakers in the parliament also said it was against the law to receive a salary from a foreign entity while serving as an advisor to the president of Afghanistan.
 
“This has no legal place. Anyone who works in Afghanistan, his post should be clear. It's interesting that he had jobs inside Afghanistan and also outside Afghanistan,” said MP Semeen Barakzai.
 
TOLOnews reporters made several efforts to obtain a comment from Qayoumi, but without success.
 
Qayoumi’s administrstive head did say that Qayoumi served as an advisor between  2016 and  2017, and did not earn a salary.