The Corruption and Organized Crime Reporting Project (OCCRP) has named former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani as one of the runners up in the list of most corrupt indivuals in 2021.

Taking the top spot was Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko who was named the most corrupt person of the year.

The runners up were Ghani, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and disgraced Austrian Prime Minister Sebastian Kurz.

The OCCRP said Lukashenko has gained the position because of all his efforts to promote and increase organized crime and corruption. The project, however, said that Ghani deserved such an award due to widespread corruption and gross incompetence.

Without a doubt, Ghani deserves an award, said Drew Sullivan, one of the project’s co-founders. He was immersed in corruption and very incompetent.

He left his people alone, leaving them in the midst of misery and death, to live among the corrupt officials of previous governments in the moral effluent of the United Arab Emirates, he said.