Afghan President Hamid Karzai met Tuesday with embattled Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) to discuss the scourge of public corruption, according to a news release on Karzai’s official website.
According to the release:
[Karzai] called awarding of contracts to relatives and affiliates of Afghan senior officials a major source of corruption, underscoring that the United States should avoid it.
He added that contracts awarded to the senior officials’ relatives and affiliates would weaken Afghanistan’s system, making the anti-corruption campaign more susceptible to problems.
Menendez, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is at the center of his own corruption scandal in the United States, which involves allegations he intervened in a contract dispute on behalf of major Democratic donor Dr. Salomon Melgen from whom he had accepted trips on a private jet.
The FBI is probing Melgen, whose background has also come under scrutiny. The Senate Ethics Committee is investigating the allegations against Menendez.