Members Fly Free Abroad - Roll Call

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April 13, 2010
By Paul Singer
Roll Call Staff

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Members of Congress and their staff racked up almost $15 million worth of foreign travel in 2009, but Congress didn’t have to pay the tab.

Under a Korean War-era law governing Congressional foreign travel, Congress doesn’t pay for its own trips abroad, and there is no apparent limit on what the government can spend for Members’ hotels, taxicabs and room service.

When a Congressional committee holds a field hearing in Wisconsin or a Member of Congress flies to a conference in Arkansas with a few staff members, those travel costs are paid for out of the annual budgets of either the committee’s or the Member’s office.

But when a Congressional delegation travels overseas, the accommodations are made by the State Department and billed back to a government account that automatically refills itself and has no spending limit attached.

The travel account dates back to a 1950s law that allowed the U.S. government to hold excess “foreign currency” in accounts around the world and use those balances to pay on-the-ground expenses of visiting Congressional delegations.

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For years, the Treasury Department used revenues from sales of grain abroad or the income from foreign assistance loans to pay for Congressional travel, but in 1977 the U.S. comptroller general ruled that practice out of bounds.

So Congress amended the provision in 1978 to establish that “whenever local currencies owned by the United States are not otherwise available” to pay for local travel costs, “the Treasury shall purchase such local currencies as may be necessary for such purposes, using any funds in the treasury not otherwise appropriated.”

Translation: The government can use whatever funds it has lying around to pay the travel costs of Congressional delegations overseas.

This language creates two conditions that are rare in federal budgeting. First, it establishes a “permanent appropriation,” meaning Congress does not have to approve spending for its own travel each year, as it does for other Congressional budget items such as office supplies and salaries. Second, the program has no dollar limit. The language authorizes the government to spend whatever it needs to cover the cost of Congressional foreign travel, so Members of Congress never have to ask whether there is enough money left for the next trip they plan to take.

Discovering exactly what has been spent out of the account is almost impossible.

Congress regularly publishes in the Congressional Record reports of “foreign currencies and U.S. dollars utilized” for foreign travel. Last year, according to a Roll Call tally of those reports, House committees reported about $8.7 million in travel expenses, and the Senate reported a little more than $5 million in 2009.

But Roll Call was unable to find any government agency that would verify expenditures from the account or provide accounting records for prior years.

According to Congressional staff and State Department employees, the system operates this way: The Speaker of the House, the chairman of a committee, or the Majority or Minority Leader of the Senate approves a Congressional trip and asks the State Department to arrange it. The State Department makes the arrangements and bills the Congressional travel accounts — one Senate, one House — maintained by the Treasury.

If the delegation is traveling on a military airplane, the Defense Department pays those costs out of its own budget. Roll Call reported last year that the military maintains a fleet of about 375 airplanes that are used for VIP travel — including Congressional travel — and according to military records, these aircraft can cost as much as $20,000 per hour to operate. When a Congressional delegation travels in military aircraft, the cost of the travel is not included in the public disclosures.

When a CODEL uses commercial aircraft, the State Department pays for commercial travel and bills those costs to the same Congressional travel accounts, sources told Roll Call.

Several State Department sources said that other expenses that may be billed to the “foreign currency” accounts include overtime for embassy staff in the host country who work extra hours or weekends to accommodate the travelers; emergency prepaid cell phones for the travelers, programmed with local contact numbers; baggage handling fees; and extra conference rooms in the host hotel for delegation members to use as meeting space or a “control room.”

Members of a traveling Congressional delegation also receive a per diem to cover expenses, and this money also comes from the “foreign currency” fund.

The Wall Street Journal reported in March that per diems can be as much as $250 per traveler per day, and most Members simply pocket the cash or use it to go shopping for personal items.

At the end of March, the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee and the House Office of Congressional Ethics alleging that “members may be illegally pocketing taxpayer funds” and requesting an investigation of the management of per diems.

Congress does not keep track of how much is spent out of the “foreign currency” accounts.

The Congressional Research Service has no record of studying the costs of Congressional foreign travel, and the Government Accountability Office has issued no reports on the matter since the mid-1980s.

Spokesmen for a half-dozen Congressional committees that have authorized foreign trips said that the State Department pays for all foreign travel.

A spokesman for the Senate Appropriations Committee said, “Overseas non-DOD funded Congressional travel is paid for through permanent and indefinite budget authority authorized in ... the International Security Assistance Act of 1978 and therefore does not require an annual appropriation.”

A Democratic leadership aide referred questions about the Congressional travel accounts to the Treasury Department and said, “The bottom line here is that these are taxpayer dollars and Members are required to disclose the costs of these trips so there is complete transparency on funds spent.”

The Treasury Department referred calls to the State Department, where officials said they did not know the source of the funds in the Congressional travel account.

The State Department also refused Roll Call’s request for a tally of how much has been spent out of the accounts over the past three years.

A 2007 State Department briefing for Congressional staff, obtained by Roll Call, says only that travel expenses “will be charged against specific congressional travel accounts held by the U.S. Treasury,” but it makes no mention of needing to check on available funds for travel.

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Putin’s Party Wins in Regional Elections Across Russia - NYTimes.com

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By SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY

MOSCOW — The pro-Kremlin party United Russia swept regional elections across Russia, strengthening its political power nationwide while also dominating the voting for the Moscow city government, according to results released Monday.

Opposition leaders complained about electoral fraud, and disturbances were reported in the North Caucasus region of Dagestan because of problems at the voting sites.

Votes were held Sunday in 75 of Russia’s 83 regions, for positions varying from mayor to representative in the local legislatures. United Russia, led by Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, who is also the party chairman, called its nationwide success a vote of confidence in its economic policies.

“We can say that the voters of Russia, in a situation where we are battling the global economic crisis, are for stabilization of the political situation, for the right to realize those plans that have been set forth,” said Boris V. Gryzlov, chairman of the party’s Supreme Council.

Among the more than 7,000 local elections were races conducted in Chechnya, Ingushetia and other regions of the Caucasus.

Elections to the Moscow city government were the most closely watched. With 99 percent of the vote counted on Monday, United Russia, with 66 percent of the vote, was poised to win 32 of 35 seats in the legislature; the Communist Party, with 13 percent of the vote, was expected to win 3.

By contrast, the liberal party Yabloko, which has provided the most vocal opposition to Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov of Moscow, did not meet the 7 percent threshold of votes necessary for a seat.

Ilya Yashin, a former youth leader of Yabloko who joined the more radical opposition movement Solidarity, was taken off the ballot in Moscow for the city Duma, the local legislature, along with other Solidarity members, including the party’s leader, Boris Y. Nemtsov, for reported irregularities.

Mr. Yashin lamented on his blog Monday that Moscow had joined regions like the Caucasus as a place where United Russia had an unchallenged grasp on power.

Vladimir Y. Churov, chairman of the Central Election Commission, speaking to reporters on Sunday, rejected charges of electoral fraud. “Statements about mass violations, these are of course hysteria and an attempt to exert unlawful moral pressure during the counting of votes,” he said. “This is moral terror.”

Mr. Churov acknowledged but played down the extent of difficulties in Derbent, a town in Dagestan where one-third of the polling places never opened. The town’s mayor, who supports the Kremlin, won with 68 percent of the vote.

Mr. Yashin reported on his blog that about 100 activists of the Solidarity movement held a protest in central Moscow on Monday evening, claiming falsification of the Moscow election results. More than 40 people were detained by the police, the Ekho Moskvy radio station reported. The Associated Press reported that police officers in riot gear broke up a small demonstration, dragging people away.

Fake Afghan Poll Sites Favored Karzai, Officials Assert - NYTimes.com

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By DEXTER FILKINS and CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghans loyal to President Hamid Karzai set up hundreds of fictitious polling sites where no one voted but where hundreds of thousands of ballots were still recorded toward the president’s re-election, according to senior Western and Afghan officials here.

The fake sites, as many as 800, existed only on paper, said a senior Western diplomat in Afghanistan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political delicacy of the vote. Local workers reported that hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of votes for Mr. Karzai in the election last month came from each of those places. That pattern was confirmed by another Western official based in Afghanistan.

“We think that about 15 percent of the polling sites never opened on Election Day,” the senior Western diplomat said. “But they still managed to report thousands of ballots for Karzai.”

Besides creating the fake sites, Mr. Karzai’s supporters also took over approximately 800 legitimate polling centers and used them to fraudulently report tens of thousands of additional ballots for Mr. Karzai, the officials said.

The result, the officials said, is that in some provinces, the pro-Karzai ballots may exceed the people who actually voted by a factor of 10. “We are talking about orders of magnitude,” the senior Western diplomat said.

The widening accounts of fraud pose a stark problem for the Obama administration, which has 68,000 American troops deployed here to help reverse gains by Taliban insurgents. American officials hoped that the election would help turn Afghans away from the Taliban by giving them a greater voice in government. Instead, the Obama administration now faces the prospect of having to defend an Afghan administration for the next five years that is widely seen as illegitimate.

“This was fraud en masse,” the Western diplomat said.

Most of the fraud perpetrated on behalf of Mr. Karzai, officials said, took place in the Pashtun-dominated areas of the east and south where officials said that turnout on Aug. 20 was exceptionally low. That included Mr. Karzai’s home province, Kandahar, where preliminary results indicate that more than 350,000 ballots have been turned in to be counted. But Western officials estimated that only about 25,000 people actually voted there.

Waheed Omar, the main spokesman for Mr. Karzai’s campaign, acknowledged Sunday that there had been cases of fraud committed by different candidates. But he accused the president’s opponents of trying to score political points by making splashy accusations in the news media. “There have been cases — we have reported numerous cases — and our view is the only place where discussion can be held is in the Election Complaints Commission,” he said.

American officials have mostly kept a public silence about the fraud allegations. A senior American official said Sunday that they were looking into the allegations behind the scenes. “An absence of public statements does not mean an absence of concern and engagement on these issues,” the official said.

But a different Western official in Kabul said that there were divisions among the international community and Afghan political circles over how to proceed. This official said he believed the next four or five days would decide whether the entire electoral process would stand or fall. “This is crunch time,” he said.

Adding to the drumbeat, on Sunday the deputy director of the Afghan Independent Election Commission said that the group was disqualifying all the ballots cast in 447 polling sites because of fraud. The deputy director, Daoud Ali Najafi, said it was not clear how many votes had been affected, or what percentage they represented of the total. He gave no details of what fraud had been discovered.

With about three-quarters of the ballots counted in the Aug. 20 election, Mr. Karzai leads with nearly 49 percent of the vote, compared with 32 percent for his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent, the election goes to a runoff.

Officials in Kabul say it will probably take months before the Election Complaints Commission, which is dominated by Westerners appointed by the United Nations, will be able to declare a winner. Such an interregnum with no clear leader in office could prove destabilizing for a country that is already beset by ethnic division and an increasingly violent insurgency.

One opposition candidate for president, Ashraf Ghani, the former finance minister, said that the scale of the fraud on Election Day had deeply damaged the political process that was being slowly built in Afghanistan.

“For five years Mr. Karzai was my president,” he said in an interview at his home in Kabul. “Now how many Afghans will consider him their president?”

Since ballots were cast last month, anecdotal evidence has emerged of widespread fraud across the Pashtun-dominated areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan, where Mr. Karzai has many allies. Many of the allegations come from Kandahar Province, where Mr. Karzai’s younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is the chairman of the provincial council and widely regarded as the most powerful man in the region. Last week, the governor of Shorabak District, which lies in Kandahar Province, claimed that Hamid Karzai’s allies shut down all the polling centers in the area and falsified 23,900 ballots for Mr. Karzai.

Two provincial council candidates in Kandahar, both close to the government, confirmed that widespread pro-Karzai fraud had occurred, in particular in places where poor security prevented observers and candidates’ representatives from watching.

“Now people will not trust the provincial council and the government system,” said Muhammad Ehsan, the deputy head of the provincial council, who was running for re-election. “Now people understand who has come to power and how.”

Hajji Abdul Majid, 75, the chief of the tribal elders council in Argestan District, in Kandahar Province, said that despite the fact that security forces opened the town’s polling place, no one voted, so any result from his district would be false.

“The people know that the government just took control of the district center for that day of the elections,” he said. “People are very frustrated. They don’t believe in the government.”

He added: “If Karzai is re-elected, people will leave the country or join the Taliban.”

More evidence of fraud has emerged in the past few days. In Zangabad, about 20 miles west of Kandahar, local residents say no voting took place on Aug. 20. The village’s single polling site, the Sulaiman Mako School, is used by Taliban guerrillas as their headquarters, the residents said. The area around Zangabad is one of the most contested in Afghanistan. Despite the nonexistent turnout, Afghan election records show that nearly 2,000 ballots were collected from the Sulaiman Mako School and sent to Kabul to be counted by election officials.

The allegations in Zangabad are being echoed throughout the Panjwai District. Official Afghan election records show that 16 polling centers were supposed to be open on Election Day. But according to at least one local leader, only a fraction of that number actually existed.

Haji Agha Lalai is a senior member of the provincial council in Kandahar, where Panjwai is located. As a candidate for re-election, he sent election observers across the area, including to Panjwai. In an interview, Mr. Lalai said that only “five or six” polling centers were open in Panjwai District that day — far fewer than the 16 claimed by the Afghan government.

So far, the Independent Election Commission has released results from seven of Panjwai District’s polling centers. The tally so far: 5,213 votes for Mr. Karzai, 328 for Mr. Abdullah.

Dexter Filkins reported from Kabul and Istanbul, and Carlotta Gall from Kandahar and Kabul.

BBC - New Afghan 'poll frauds' emerge

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Further evidence has come to light of widespread fraud during the recent Afghan presidential election.

One tribal elder has admitted to the BBC that he tampered with hundreds of ballots in favour of incumbent President Hamid Karzai.

More than 600 serious complaints are being investigated, but the deadline for new complaints has now passed.

With 60% of polling stations having already declared, Mr Karzai has a clear lead.

In the latest case of alleged fraud uncovered by the BBC, a tribal elder from Zaziaryoub district - in the eastern province of Paktia - said he had helped to fill in about 900 ballots in favour of President Karzai.

The elder says in a neighbouring village, his nephew saw one man fill in more than 2,000 ballots.

Allegations of fraud have been made against all the prime candidates, but the election process seems to have been working overwhelmingly in favour of Mr Karzai, says the BBC's Chris Morris in Kabul.

However, some of these complaints will not get heard by the Electoral Complaints Commission, as the time to file an official complaint has passed.

The commission is currently looking into 2,000 fraud claims overall.

Figures obtained from the campaign of Hamid Karzai's leading opponent, Dr Abdullah, suggest that in four provinces alone results have been declared from 28 polling stations which observers had reported were closed.

Damning evidence

AFGHAN ELECTION

Vote held on 20 August for presidency and provincial councils

Turnout not made official yet but estimated at 40-50%

More than 400 insurgent attacks on polling day, Nato says

More than 2,000 fraud allegations, 600 deemed serious

Final result expected 17 Sept but fraud allegations must be cleared

Hamid Karzai has clear lead over Abdullah Abdullah in presidency race

Candidate needs more than 50% to avoid runoff

Just days ago, a tribe in the south made the most serious claim so far.

The leader of Kandahar's Bareez tribe said that nearly 30,000 votes were cast fraudulently for President Hamid Karzai instead of primarily for the main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.

Mr Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who heads the Kandahar provincial council, called the claims "baseless".

Because of time needed to investigate the fraud allegations, the final results of the election may not be known until the end of September.

There are concerns continuing claims of fraud could undermine the legitimacy of the election, which Afghanistan's Western allies see as crucial in their campaign against the Taliban.

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Tribal Leaders Say Karzai’s Team Forged 23,900 Votes - NYTimes.com

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By DEXTER FILKINS

KABUL, Afghanistan — Just a week before this country’s presidential election, the leaders of a southern Afghan tribe called Bariz gathered to make a bold decision: they would abandon the incumbent and local favorite, Hamid Karzai, and endorse his challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.

Mr. Abdullah flew to the southern city of Kandahar to receive the tribe’s endorsement. The leaders of the tribe, who live in a district called Shorabak, prepared to deliver a local landslide.

But it never happened, the tribal leaders said.

Instead, aides to Mr. Karzai’s brother Ahmed Wali — the leader of the Kandahar provincial council and the most powerful man in southern Afghanistan — detained the governor of Shorabak, Delaga Bariz, and shut down all of the district’s 45 polling sites on election day. The ballot boxes were taken to Shorabak’s district headquarters, where, Mr. Bariz and other tribal leaders said, local police officers stuffed them with thousands of ballots.

At the end of the day, 23,900 ballots were shipped to Kabul, Mr. Bariz said, with every one marked for President Karzai.

“Not a single person in Shorabak District cast a ballot — not a single person,” Mr. Bariz said in an interview here in the capital, where he and a group of tribal elders came to file a complaint. “Mr. Karzai’s people stuffed all the ballot boxes.”

The accusations by Mr. Bariz, and several other tribal leaders from Shorabak, are the most serious allegations so far that have been publicized against Mr. Karzai’s electoral machine, which faces a deluge of fraud complaints from around the country.

The Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission said Tuesday that the number of complaints about vote stealing and other forms of fraud had reached 2,615.

Mr. Karzai’s campaign is accused of forging ballots, stealing votes and preventing people from going to the polls.

In Kandahar Province, where Mr. Karzai’s family is in control, allegations of a type similar to those made in Shorabak have been made in many of the province’s 17 districts. Early election returns show that Mr. Karzai has managed to capture nearly 48,000 votes, compared with only 3,000 for Mr. Abdullah, his nearest challenger.

Slightly less than half of all ballots have been counted. Mr. Karzai leads with about 46 percent of the vote, compared with 33 percent for Mr. Abdullah.

Mr. Karzai and his aides deny any sort of fraud, and they have hunkered down in the presidential palace to await the final results. But the allegations are casting a cloud over his re-election campaign, raising the prospect that even if he wins his presidency could be seriously tainted.

At the same time, the allegations are increasing the pressure on American officials to ensure that the accusations of fraud are properly investigated. An election widely perceived as having been stolen could deal a serious setback to the Obama administration, which has committed itself to prevailing here in the nearly eight-year-old war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Allegations like those described by Mr. Bariz are throwing the basic integrity of the election into question. Much of the story told by Mr. Bariz and the other tribal elders was impossible to verify. But it appeared credible. All three men spoke in great detail. And all of them were willing to be publicly named and to have their photographs taken.

As recently as 10 months ago, Mr. Bariz said, he had considered himself an ally of President Karzai. He had been nominated by a group of Bariz elders to be the governor of the Shorabak District, a desolate stretch of sand and scrub that sits on the country’s southwestern border with Pakistan. Mr. Bariz’s nomination was ratified by Tooryalai Wesa, the governor of Kandahar Province, who was appointed by President Karzai.

But as election day neared, Mr. Bariz and other leaders in his tribe said they could not bring themselves to support Mr. Karzai for another five-year term. The reason, he said, was that Mr. Karzai’s government had done so little good.

“There are no clinics, no schools, no roads, no water dams — nothing,” Mr. Bariz said. “We decided to support someone who would unify the country.” The leaders of the Bariz tribe picked Mr. Abdullah, a former foreign minister.

In theory, the decision by the elders sealed Mr. Abdullah’s victory in Shorabak: nearly everyone in Shorabak belongs to the Bariz tribe. As is common in many such societies, tribal leaders in Afghanistan often negotiate with politicians to deliver the votes of their tribe.

Mr. Abdullah’s campaign manager in southern Afghanistan, Esmatullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name, said the candidate met a large group of Bariz tribal elders in Kandahar on Aug. 12 to receive their endorsement. It was a joyous affair, Mr. Esmatullah said, for which even women turned out. But not everyone who wanted to come to the endorsement ceremony was able to make it.

“The police were blocking the roads,” Mr. Esmatullah said.

The next day, Mr. Bariz said, officials in Kandahar were furious. One of Kandahar’s senior officials, Mohammed Anas, ordered Mr. Bariz not to return to his home in Shorabak. Mr. Anas said he had no choice.

“When I asked him why he wouldn’t let me go home, he said, ‘Because your whole tribe is going to vote for Dr. Abdullah,’ ” Mr. Bariz said.

Mr. Bariz did not speak to Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s younger brother, only to more junior officials like Mr. Anas. But few decisions of any import are believed to be taken in Kandahar without the approval of Ahmed Wali Karzai. On the streets, his nickname is “The King of the South.” Last year, for instance, Ahmed Wali Karzai was widely seen as having replaced the governor, Rahmatullah Raufi, when he fell out of favor.

Attempts to contact Ahmed Wali Karzai were unsuccessful.

When election day finally came, the ballots were never delivered to the polling centers in Shorabak, said two Bariz tribal leaders who were charged with overseeing the sites. Instead of going to the polling places, all the ballots and ballot boxes were delivered to the district government’s headquarters. That place, the tribal leaders said, had been commandeered by the Afghan Border Police.

“The ballots were never delivered,” said Abdul Quyoum, a farmer from the village of Karaze, where one of the polling sites was supposed to be. “I waited all day.”

Mr. Quyoum was one of two tribal elders from Shorabak who traveled to Kabul with Mr. Bariz. The other was Fazul Mohammed, who told a nearly identical story.

When the ballots were not delivered to the polling site, Mr. Mohammed said, he walked to the district government headquarters to see what was wrong. The building, he said, was being guarded by officers of the Afghan Border Police. As an election official, Mr. Mohammed said, he was allowed to go inside.

“The border police were stuffing the ballots, hundreds of them, into the boxes,” he said. “And there were other people who were counting the ballots and keeping the records.”

Mr. Mohammed said he protested but was told to leave. Later, he said, he was told that a total of 23,900 ballots had been filled out, all in Mr. Karzai’s name.

“Dr. Abdullah did not receive a single vote,” he said.

Mr. Bariz, the governor, said he had not returned to Shorabak.

“I don’t think I am going to be governor much longer,” he said.

Sangar Rahimi contributed to this report from Kabul.

Doctored Data Cast Doubt on Argentina

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 16, 2009

BUENOS AIRES -- Workers at the government's National Institute of Statistics call it crass manipulation: Their agency, under pressure from above, altered socioeconomic data to reflect numbers palatable to the presidency. Inflation and poverty miraculously dropped, they said in interviews, and the economy boomed.

At least officially.

"They just erased the real numbers," said Luciano Belforte, an 18-year veteran at the institute. "Reality did not matter."

The alleged manipulation, which is under investigation by anti-corruption prosecutors, has angered Argentines. But in a globalized world, where a pensioner in Italy might be as likely to invest in Argentina as in Fiat, the suspected modifications are being felt far beyond this city.

In fact, an association of community college professors in New Jersey, a cattleman in Colorado and a Latino business group in California say they too are being shortchanged because they hold Argentine bonds. By underreporting inflation figures, economists say, Argentina is cheating investors of proper compensation on nearly $50 billion in debt benchmarked to inflation.

"The way these bonds work is that every month, or every six months, the principal adjusts for inflation," said Robert Shapiro, co-chair of the American Task Force Argentina, a Washington group lobbying for Argentina to pay its debt to American investors. "So if inflation is actually 30 percent, and they're only adjusting 10 percent, that's a huge loss."

Kathy Malachowski, president of the New Jersey professors group, said its pension plan invests in Argentine bonds. "We want to be able to retire and know that our money is going to be there," she said.

Officials at the Economy Ministry, the presidency and the INDEC, as the statistics institute is known, declined interview requests. A spokesman for the Economy Ministry, Sergio Poggi, said the new minister, Amado Boudou, is undertaking a review of INDEC methodology going back to 1999 and is creating a technical council of academics to advise the institute.

"This is the best way for all of us to be sure that things are being done correctly," President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said last month.

But credit-rating agencies and financial investment companies, among them Credit Suisse, say they are skeptical anything will change.

The problems at the INDEC, recounted in interviews with seven current workers and one former administrator, began in late 2006 during the presidency of Fernández de Kirchner's predecessor, her husband, Néstor Kirchner.

In accounts backed up by a 91-page complaint by prosecutors, institute employees recalled incessant phone calls from high-ranking government officials who wondered aloud whether there was a way to arrive at lower inflation numbers.

In early 2007, several statisticians, data-entry clerks and field workers who collect consumer prices were replaced, the prosecutors' investigation has shown. The institute then began to report lower inflation figures, which are used to calculate poverty rates, economic growth and other statistics, according to documents at the attorney general's office.

"It's a maneuver that brought economic consequences and a lack of credibility in the information produced by the Argentine state," said Manuel Garrido, the former anti-corruption prosecutor who brought the case.

Economists say the official inflation rate of 8.5 percent in 2007 was really about 25 percent. In the 12 months ended this June, the INDEC put the rate at 5.3 percent, but economists say it might be three times higher. Argentina's vaunted economic growth this decade might have been exaggerated, too. Credit Suisse said the 7 percent expansion the government reported last year is likely 2 to 3 percent lower.

Political analysts and economists say the allegations have hurt the country's credibility with investors and its ability to access foreign credit, a market closed to Argentina after its 2001 default on $95 billion.

"It's very difficult to analyze the country as a result of statistics that can't be believed," said Fergus McCormick, senior vice president at DBRS, a New York credit-rating agency that tracks Argentina.

The controversy at the INDEC has cast a spotlight on a vital, if little understood, practice of economic planning -- the collection of socioeconomic data. Authorities use the data to set salaries and direct social services. Companies use the information to make long-term plans.

Government critics say officials in Néstor Kirchner's administration began fiddling with the INDEC figures as his wife's campaign to succeed him gathered momentum ahead of the October 2007 election.

Even so, by the spring of 2008, months after taking office, Fernández de Kirchner's popularity had plummeted after the country's powerful agricultural sector revolted against her economic policies. Analysts here say that disbelief over the INDEC figures -- polls showed that only one in 10 Argentines trusted official inflation figures -- further tarnished her image. In June, her ruling coalition was trounced in midterm congressional elections.

Raúl Cabral, who helps run the 120-year-old Progreso food market, said skepticism about the government's data has generated antipathy toward the Kirchners. "The inflation takes away their credibility," Cabral said. "They talk of inflation of 4 percent, and a liter of milk goes from one to two pesos."

What prosecutors call the illegal and arbitrary recording of economic data is said to have first taken place in January 2007. That was when a team headed by Graciela Bevacqua, a mathematician who oversaw the collection of consumer prices, tabulated that month's inflation at nearly 2 percent. Officials, though, released a 1.1 percent rate, said Bevacqua, whose account was backed up by the prosecutors' complaint.

"It was mathematically impossible," said Bevacqua, who no longer works at the institute.

Statisticians, mathematicians and survey-takers who still work at the INDEC described how managers stopped surveying products that had recorded steep price hikes. "If something went up more than 15 percent, they'd take it off the list," said Marcela Almeida, a mathematician and one of several workers deposed by prosecutors.

Almeida said managers would obsess about certain products, such as bread, urging surveyors to come back to the INDEC office with prices that remained low. If they were not low enough, Almeida said, "the person who received their forms would change this price."

The controversy has raised questions about the government's official poverty figure. The INDEC's calculation is 15.3 percent; the Catholic Church says it is closer to 40 percent. After Pope Benedict XVI called poverty in Argentina a "scandal" this month, the government acknowledged that as many as 23 percent of Argentines might be poor.

But economists, among them Juan Bour, of the Latin American Foundation for Economic Investigations, said they expect no major changes in the INDEC's data-gathering. "It would be a recognition of significant failure," Bour said.

Fighting Fraud in Afghanistan's Elections

By ANAND GOPAL

KABUL -- Afghanistan's presidential election next week is proving to be a complicated exercise in democracy. A raging insurgency threatens to close voting centers. Some of the 38 candidates maintain ties to armed militias. Others have threatened violence if they lose. And reports of widespread fraud endanger the poll's credibility.

It is Grant Kippen's job to keep the process honest. Mr. Kippen heads the Electoral Complaints Commission, an independent body given the task of receiving complaints about candidates, auditing the process for fraud, and, when necessary, imposing sanctions on violators to try to ensure the vote is as credible as possible.

"It's a challenge, an enormous challenge," Mr. Kippen says. "We expect thousands of complaints and allegations by Election Day. You do your best given the circumstances."

The commission, established in 2005, grew out of the experience of the 2004 Afghan presidential elections, when politicians complained that there was no independent body to deal with accusations of vote stealing and ballot stuffing. It is wholly separate from the Independent Elections Commission, the institution that is organizing and conducting the Aug. 20 polls.

Western officials say the United Nations-funded complaints commission, with nearly 270 people in Kabul and offices in each of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, will be key in trying to ensure the election's success. A vote marred by fraud and irregularities would be a setback in the drive to show the country's political institutions are making progress.

Mr. Kippen, a 54-year-old, mild-mannered native of Ottawa, Canada, is prepared for the role, having spent decades working with political parties and elections. He was an activist with the Canadian Liberal Party, and later worked in the prime minister's office.

In recent years, he was country director for the National Democratic Institute in Afghanistan, a nonprofit organization created by the U.S. government. His work in the last presidential elections caught the eye of U.N. officials, who nominated him to head up the complaints commission in 2005.

"The complaints range from serious allegations of human-rights abuses to cases that have nothing to do with elections," he says. "Most, however, involve the misuse of government resources."

The commission weighs complaints in light of the law governing elections. For example, candidates can't have dual citizenship or ties to illegal militias.

Kate Brooks for The Wall Street Journal

Grant Kippen, head of the Electoral Complaints Commission, at an ECC training session at the Serena hotel in Kabul.

So far, the commission has barred 59 candidates from running for president or for provincial-council seats, 56 of them because of ties to illegally armed groups. The commission also has levied fines: One of President Hamid Karzai's running mates, Karim Khalili, was fined $1,400 for using a government helicopter to attend a campaign rally. Other common infractions include failing to declare campaign finances or holding government offices -- except the presidency -- while campaigning. The complaints are usually brought by members of the public or rival political parties.

Such a process is necessary to keep potentially explosive situations in check, Mr. Kippen says. For instance, the commission is investigating a statement from the camp of Mr. Karzai's chief rival, Abdullah Abdullah, that threatened armed opposition if Mr. Karzai won.

"While there are serious complaints, often we get bogged down by less-serious ones because the public doesn't understand the nature of the commission," Mr. Kippen adds. In parliamentary elections a few years ago, a man lodged a complaint because a candidate ran off with his wife.

On Election Day, Mr. Kippen expects most complaints to be serious. Watchdog groups documented many cases of fraud in the voter-registration process. The Free and Fair Elections Foundation of Afghanistan, an independent body that Mr. Kippen helped to found, documented irregularities in 85% of the registration centers in one phase of the process. The commission is training its members to spot fraud by checking for proper ID cards and ensuring that voters have their fingers inked to prevent double voting.

Some say the commission can't be truly impartial because it relies on the government for many important decisions. For instance, it relies on the findings of a government body headed by Mr. Khalili, Mr. Karzai's vice-presidential candidate, to determine whether a candidate has ties to an illegally armed group.

"President Karzai has too much power over that process," says Akbar Bai, a presidential candidate who was disqualified because of alleged ties to such groups.

Electoral law also bars candidates who have committed human-rights violations. Human-rights groups have amassed evidence some candidates were involved in violations, but the commission hasn't disqualified any candidate on those grounds. Instead of making an independent assessment, it relies on findings of the government, despite the fact that many powerful figures in the government have been accused of violations themselves, Mr. Bai says.

Jandad Spinghar, of the Free and Fair Elections Foundation of Afghanistan, says the commission often doesn't respond to detailed allegations of violations that his agency provides.

"We only have limited capacity to deal with all of these things," Mr. Kippen says. He adds, however, that Afghan democracy is slowly moving in the right direction. "If we can get people to understand that we are building a mechanism for the future," he says, "where one day people will resolve disputes by filing complaints and having debates, instead of trading bullets, we will have done our job."

Fears of Fraud Cast Pall Over Afghan Election

By CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan — Little more than three weeks before the presidential election, problems that include insecurity and fears of fraud are raising concerns about the credibility of the race, which President Obama has called the most important event in Afghanistan this year.

With Taliban insurgents active in half the country, many Afghans remain doubtful that the Aug. 20 election will take place at all. The Taliban issued a statement last week calling for a boycott, a threat that could deter voters in much of the south, where the insurgency is strongest.

Election officials insist that the election will go ahead. But they concede that the insecurity will prevent as many as 600 polling centers, or roughly 10 percent, from opening. Western officials acknowledge that the election will be imperfect, but say they are aiming for enough credibility to satisfy both Afghans and international monitors.

Even that goal will be hard to meet. Though increasingly unpopular here and abroad, President Hamid Karzai is still the front-runner in a field of about 40 candidates, and only one, Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister for Mr. Karzai, has emerged as a serious challenger. Many Afghans are convinced that foreign powers will choose the winner and fix the result.

But no matter who prevails, the multitude of problems and what is expected to be a low turnout in conflict areas are likely to reduce the next president’s mandate.

Western officials and Afghans alike worry that the election could be so flawed that many Afghans might reject the balloting and its results, with potentially dangerous consequences.

If they cannot vote because of insecurity in the south, Pashtuns, the country’s largest ethnic group and the one most closely associated with the Taliban, could become even more alienated from the government and the foreign forces backing it, political analysts say.

They also warn of Iranian-style protests and instability if the population in the north, which largely supports a change of government, feels its vote has been manipulated.

“We are worried about voter registration fraud, and we are worried about voters who will be unable to reach polling places because of insecurity,” Richard C. Holbrooke, the American special envoy, said during a visit last week. “And we are worried about the accuracy of the vote count, and we are worried about the ability of women to vote.”

Philippe Morillon, the outspoken retired French general who leads the European Union election observer mission to Afghanistan, said his top priority was to prevent fraud. “It is you who will choose your president, and we are there simply to guarantee that your choice is not betrayed,” Mr. Morillon told Afghan journalists at a news briefing in Kabul.

In an effort to speed the results and reduce the opportunity for rigging, ballots will be counted at individual polling stations. Afghan officials have said there will be a preliminary result within 48 hours, followed by a two-week period for complaints and confirmation procedures.

But Western officials say it could take longer to declare a winner, anticipating challenges from around the country’s 34 provinces, where votes will also be cast for provincial councils.

“It could be like 34 Minnesota Senate races,” one Western official said, referring to the disputed race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman, which took nearly eight months to resolve in Mr. Franken’s favor.

Other officials warn that public frustration with the war, corruption and lagging reconstruction and development is so high that many people may shun the polls.

In the south, election officials said they were expecting a turnout below 30 percent, said Abdul Qader Nurzai, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission office in Kandahar.

“The people are not that interested in the elections,” said Abdul Hadi, the election commissioner in the adjoining province of Helmand, where thousands of Marines have been deployed to regain towns from the Taliban in time for the elections.

“They voted before, and they did not see any result from that,” Mr. Hadi said. “And they don’t want to put their lives in jeopardy for one vote.” An estimated 70 percent of Afghan voters turned out for the country’s first presidential election, in October 2004.

In Helmand, in southern Afghanistan, the election will take place only in safe zones in the main towns, Mr. Hadi said. One third of districts are under Taliban control and will not be able to take part, he said. In some districts, like Kajaki, the Taliban have besieged administrative centers and will not allow civilians in to vote, he said.

In the eastern Paktika Province, which borders Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, more than 20 percent of the voting centers will have to be moved or abandoned because of security, officials said.

Afghan election officials in the capital, Kabul, insist that voters will turn out. About 4.5 million people registered for new voting cards this year, far exceeding expectations, said Azizullah Ludin, the election commission chief.

Yet irregularities are widespread. As many as 3 million duplicate voter registration cards may be circulating among the 17 million issued, according to one election observer, who asked not to be named because of the delicacy of the subject.

Twenty percent of the new cards went to under-age boys and another 20 percent were duplicates, an Afghan election observer organization, the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, found in the centers it was able to monitor.

For security and cultural reasons, women’s registration has been low. Yet the number of registered women exceeded the number of registered men in some areas, indicating more irregularities. Male family members were able to obtain voting cards for women simply by providing a list of women’s names, the Afghan election monitors reported in May.

This election is unlike Afghanistan’s first presidential contest five years ago in that most balloting and monitoring is being run by Afghans, with only a small number of international advisers and observers, most prominently the 120-member mission from the European Union.

So far, the Taliban have generally refrained from specific attacks on the election process or on voters, and have even agreed to allow voting to take place in some areas.

Yet violence has increased, and in some places the Taliban are ordering communities not to take part. In a rambling statement issued Thursday through a spokesman, the Taliban leadership urged people to boycott and fighters to sabotage the process.

“We are requesting all mujahedeen to do their best to sabotage the malicious election process anywhere in Afghanistan,” it said. “They should carry out operations on enemy bases, and ban people from going to vote one day before the election.”

Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from Kabul, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Kyrgyz President Re-elected Amid Charges of Widespread Fraud

By VOA News 24 July 2009

Kyrgyz election officials dump ballots onto a table to begin the vote count at a polling station in Bishkek, 23 Jul 2009

International monitors are criticizing Kyrgyzstan's presidential election Friday, even as the country's election commission claims President Kurmanbek Bakijev is headed for a landslide win.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, says Thursday's election was marred by ballot-box stuffing, voter list inaccuracies and evidence of multiple voting. It also accused President Bakijev of using government resources to ensure his victory.

The preliminary report by Europe's top security organization may bolster claims by the main opposition candidate, former Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev, who says the election was a sham.

Before the polls closed Thursday, Mr. Atambayev said the election was rigged and called for a rerun. Another presidential candidate, Zhenishbek Nazaraliyev, also quit while the voting was under way.

Kyrgyzstan's elections commission said Friday that Mr. Bakijev led the race by 86 percent, with about two-thirds of the ballots counted.

The commission insists the results are valid.

The United States has a strong interest in the central Asian country, which hosts a U.S. air base that supplies American and NATO troops in nearby Afghanistan.

Russia has recently given Kyrgyzstan about $2 billion in aid in what analysts say is an attempt to wield influence in Kyrgyzstan.

President Bakiyev took power in 2005 after violent street protests forced his predecessor, Askar Akayev, to resign.

Venezuelan State That Chávez Family Rules Is Rife With Kidnapping

By SIMON ROMERO

BARINAS, Venezuela — Stretching over vast cattle estates at the foothills of the Andes, Barinas is known for two things: as the bastion of the family of President Hugo Chávez and as the setting for a terrifying surge in abductions, making it a contender for Latin America’s most likely place to get kidnapped.

An intensifying nationwide crime wave over the past decade has pushed the kidnapping rate in Venezuela past Colombia’s and Mexico’s, with about 2 abductions per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the Interior Ministry.

But nowhere in Venezuela comes close in abductions to Barinas, with 7.2 kidnappings per 100,000 inhabitants, as armed gangs thrive off the disarray here while Mr. Chávez’s family tightens its grip on the state. Seizures of cattle ranches and crumbling infrastructure also contribute to the sense of low-intensity chaos.

Barinas offers a unique microcosm of Mr. Chávez’s rule. Many poor residents still revere the president, born here into poverty in 1954. But polarization in Barinas is growing more severe, with others chafing at his newly prosperous parents and siblings, who have governed the state since the 1990s. While Barinas is a laboratory for projects like land reform, urgent problems like violent crime go unmentioned in the many billboards here extolling the Chávez family’s ascendancy.

“This is what anarchy looks like, at least the type of anarchy where the family of Chávez accumulates wealth and power as the rest of us fear for our lives,” said Ángel Santamaría, 57, a cattleman in the town of Nueva Bolivia whose son, Kusto, 8, was kidnapped while walking to school in May. He was held for 29 days, until Mr. Santamaría gathered a small ransom to free him.

The governor of Barinas, Adán Chávez, the president’s eldest brother and a former ambassador to Cuba, said this month that many of the kidnappings might have been a result of destabilization efforts by the opposition or so-called self-kidnappings: orchestrated abductions to reveal weaknesses among security forces, or to extort money from one’s own family.

“With each day that passes,” the governor said recently, “Barinas is safer than before.”

Through a spokeswoman, he declined to be interviewed.

In an election last year marred by accusations of fraud, Adán Chávez succeeded his own father, Hugo de los Reyes Chávez, a former schoolteacher who had governed Barinas for a decade with the president’s brother, Argenis, the former secretary of state in Barinas.

Another brother, Aníbal, is mayor of nearby Sabaneta, and another brother, Adelis, is a top banker at Banco Sofitasa, which does business with Adán’s government. Yet another brother, Narciso, was put in charge of cooperation projects with Cuba. The president’s cousin Asdrúbal holds a top post at the national oil company.

Politicians once loyal to the president who have broken with him and his family here contend that Mr. Chávez’s family has amassed wealth and landholdings through a series of deals carried out by front men.

One opposition leader, Wilmer Azuaje, detailed to prosecutors and legislators what he said was more than $20 million in illegal gains by the family since the president’s father was elected governor in 1998. But in a brief review of those claims, National Assembly, under the control of Chávez loyalists, cleared the family of charges of illicit enrichment.

“In the meantime, while the family wraps itself in the rhetoric of socialism, we are descending into a neo-capitalist chaos where all that matters is money,” said Alberto Santelíz, the publisher of La Prensa, a small opposition newspaper.

One reason for the rise in kidnappings is the injection of oil money into the local economy, with some families reaping quick fortunes because of ties to large infrastructure projects.

A new soccer stadium, built under the supervision of Adelis Chávez’s at a cost of more than $50 million, is still unfinished two years after its first game in 2007, joining other white elephants dotting Barinas’s landscape. Nearby lies the unfinished Museum of the Plains, intended to celebrate the culture of the president’s birthplace. A sprawling shopping mall stands half-completed after its backers fled a shakedown by construction unions.

More than a decade into the Chávez family’s rule in Barinas, the state remains Venezuela’s poorest, with average monthly household income of about $800, according to the National Statistics Institute. Kidnapping, once feared only by the wealthy, has spread in Barinas to include the poor. In one case this year of a 3-year-old girl kidnapped in the slum of Mi Jardín, the abductor, when told that the only thing of value owned by the girl’s mother was a refrigerator, instructed her to sell it to pay the ransom.

Kidnapping specialists here said the abductors were drawn from two Colombian rebel groups, a small Venezuelan guerrilla faction called the Bolivarian Liberation Front, other criminal gangs and corrupt police officers. Just a fraction of the kidnappings result in prison sentences.

“With impunity rampant in Barinas, how can our governor say with a straight face that people are kidnapping themselves?” asked Lucy Montoya, 38, a hardware store owner whose sister, Doris, a 41-year-old mother of three, was kidnapped in March.

Doris Montoya’s abductors have not freed her or communicated with her family since receiving ransom money in May, Lucy Montoya said, adding, “The government’s handling of this crisis is an affront to our dignity as human beings.”

Meanwhile, new figures show kidnappings climbing to 454 known cases in the first six months of 2009, including about 66 in Barinas, compared with a nationwide 2008 estimate of between 537 and 612. But officials acknowledge that the true figures are probably higher because many cases are never reported.

Here in Barinas, victims seethe over the inaction of the president and his family. “Our ruling dynasty is effectively telling us we are expendable,” said Rodolfo Peña, 38, a businessman who was abducted here last year. “The only other plausible theory,” he said, “is that they are too inebriated by power to notice the emergency at their feet.”

Mauritania Opposition Rejects Presidential Election Results

By Scott Stearns Nouakchott, Mauritania 19 July 2009 Mauritanian opposition candidates are rejecting results from a presidential election that show former military leader Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz winning. With more than 70 percent of ballots counted, Mauritania's electoral commission says Aziz is winning more than 52 percent of the vote. If that count holds up, the leader of last August's coup would win election in the first round - avoiding a run-off in which his main political opponents had vowed to unite against him. Those opponents immediately rejected the provisional results as an "electoral charade, which is trying to legitimize the coup." In a joint statement, Ahmed Ould Daddah, Ely Ould Mohamed Vall, Messaoud Ould Boulkheir, and Hamai Ould Meimou denounced what they called "prefabricated results." They are calling for the international community to investigate what they say were voting irregularities, including counting opposition ballots for Aziz. The opposition leaders are asking "competent bodies", including the country's constitutional council and Interior Ministry to not validate the results. Their joint statement is urging Mauritanians to mobilize to defeat what opposition leaders are calling an "electoral coup d'etat." During the campaign, Daddah said he was quiet when he says vote fraud denied him victory in presidential elections in 1991 and 2007. But he said this time he is not prepared to be silent if the election is stolen and told his supporters neither should they. Arab electoral observers monitored more than 300 of Mauritania's 2,500 polling stations. They saw irregularities including partisan electoral officials, security forces inside polling stations, and the denial of voters who registered after June 6th - most of whom support the opposition. But the group's preliminary report says it does not believe those irregularities will affect the overall outcome of the vote. Mohsen Marzouk is Secretary General of the Arab Democracy Foundation. Marzouk says Mauritania is a crucial point that will affect all its people. He called for political parties and official institutions to adhere strictly to democracy as the best way to solve the political crisis and promote stability and development. Arab observers say they will consider opposition complaints and include them in its final report. Boulkheir and Daddah had both publicly pledged to support the other in a potential run-off against Aziz if no candidate won more than 50 percent of the vote. This election was meant to restore constitutional rule to Mauritania after Aziz led a coup 11 months ago that toppled the nation's first freely-elected leader. Aziz ran a populist campaign, calling himself the "Candidate of the Poor" pledging to improve access to health care while lowering food and fuel prices. To the cheers of his supporters, he vowed to build more jails to imprison his political opponents, who he says are corrupt. Aziz campaigned far longer than most of his opponents as he began running for a previously-scheduled June election that he agreed to postpone as part of a power-sharing deal that included the opposition dropping their electoral boycott.