A guy wants to invest millions in a Taliban weed factory...
A guy wants to invest millions in a Taliban weed factory... A
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For the past six months, Afghanistan has more readily associated with people desperately trying to flee the country than a rise in foreign investment. After the Taliban took over in August 2021, there have been reports of widespread human rights abuses and persecutions of people whose lives are at odds with the strict interpretation of Sharia law enforced by the regime.
It doesn’t exactly seem like the best place to set up an international business. And yet, in late November 2021, the Taliban Interior Ministry tweeted they had reached an agreement with a foreign company named CPharm over a €400 million investment in a cannabis processing facility to be built in the country. The news threw CPharm, a small Australian medical consulting firm, into a publicity storm – one that came as a surprise even to the company itself, especially as they claimed they had nothing to do with the deal.
It turns out CPharm is also the name of another company – CPharm International (ECI), a German research and development firm that’s been experimenting with fast-growing cannabis for the past 20 years. Werner Zimmermann, 56, the company’s owner and managing director, told me he’s not exactly happy the deal has become public. A very busy man, I managed to catch him over the phone on his way to an appointment with the honorary consul of Pakistan in Düsseldorf. According to him, the magnitude of the deal between CPharm and the Taliban regime has also been misconstrued. Still, the media inquiries keep coming. "I hardly sleep anymore," Zimmermann said.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdj...d-plant-cpharm
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Originally Posted by Common
