Welcome to the Hotel Kabul, where you can’t check in anytime you like.
In December 2006, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the U.S. government’s development finance institution, approved a proposal to build a 209-room, five-star hotel and an apartment building across the street from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.
The Marriott Kabul Hotel and the adjacent apartment building would provide a gateway for Afghans returning to their country and would be a major boost to the nation’s post-war reconstruction efforts, proponents said.
But today, 10 years later, all that’s there is an empty shell — a ghost hotel.
Now an investigation by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has determined that nearly $85 million in investments have gone down the drain, thanks to “troubling management practices and lax oversight” at the site of the project.
And that’s not all. SIGAR says American taxpayers have spent thousands, if not millions, of dollars more on security because of the abandoned project’s proximity to the embassy.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/11/17/u-s-taxpayers-footing-bill-for-security-at-unused-ghost-hotel-in-kabul.html
