Former Afghan Minister of Communications Shah Sadaat, who served under toppled Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, now works as a food delivery driver in the German city of Leipzig.
Born in Afghanistan, Sadaat had previously left the country with his family and studied electrical engineering in Oxford but during a trip to Afghanistan in 2016, he was offered a ministerial post by former President Ghani.
Sadaat stated that as the Taliban began to rise in the country, people around President Ghani siphoned government funds from the state treasury and claimed that corrupt officials around the Afghan president used corruption allegations to get him to resign in 2018, Bild reports.
Now living in Leipzig for around a year, the former minister lives in a small apartment and is currently learning German while making an honest living working as a food delivery driver.
“I feel safe here, I’m not a rich man any more, but I enjoy the job and the money is enough to live on,” Sadaat told the German newspaper.
By contrast, President Ghani, who fled Afghanistan as the Taliban were taking over earlier this month, is said to have left the country with $169 million in cash stuffed in suitcases that he took to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Ambassador to Tajikistan Mohammad Zahir Aghbar not only confirmed prior reports about the president leaving with the large sum of money but called on the international police service Interpol to arrest the former Afghan leader for embezzlement.
Evacuations of western nationals and Afghan refugees have been stopped by several countries this week including Canada, Germany, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark. Evacuation operations were suspended Thursday after the terrorist attack at Kabul airport that saw two suicide bombings and at least 100 people killed and 150 wounded. Flights resumed Friday morning.