Alex Constantine - July 1, 2010
By Tim Elfrink | Miami New Times | Jul. 1 2010
Mahmood Karzai, meet Gerald Posner.
You're a multimillionaire Afghan "entrepreneur" who happens to be the brother of fabulously corrupt President Hamid Karzai, and you've just been accused by the Wall Street Journal of airlifting billions of dollars of U.S. aid out of Kabul under very shady circumstances.
He's a disgraced journalist whose career just imploded over accusations he has plagiarized from virtually every printed source in the Western Hemisphere.
Sounds like a beautiful friendship in the making!
For everyone wondering how Posner could follow up his truly sublime past few months -- in which Miami New Times busted the South Beach author for stealing from dozens of sources, and Posner threatened us with a lawsuit over our reporting -- the answer comes this morning in a letter to the Wall Street Journal.
Posner responds to the Journal's scoop last week that more than $3 billion in American aid has been stuffed into suitcases and flown out of Afghanistan, and that Mahmood Karzai likely had something to do with it.
Posner, who is a former Wall Street lawyer, writes that "it is a shame that the Journal spent two days interviewing my client Mahmood Karzai and yet chose to include him" as a suspect in the story. He says Karzai "has never transferred large amounts of cash out of the country."
Finally, he pledges that "no Afghan businessman or politician or public figure is more transparent than Mahmood Karzai."
Coming from a trustworthy fellow like Posner, that's a ringing endorsement.
Good luck with the case, Gerald!
http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2010/07/gerald_posners_new_gig_represe.php