EXCLUSIVE: Analysts have used other evidence to conclude that the transfers were likely part of an effort to offer payments to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/us/politics/russian-bounties-afghanistan-intelligence.html @charlie_savage @MujMash @rcallimachi @EricSchmittNYT

Afghan officials this week described a sequence of events that dovetails with the account of the intelligence.

They said that several businessmen who transfer money through the informal “hawala” system were arrested in Afghanistan over the past six months and are suspected of being part of a ring of middlemen who operated between the G.R.U. and Taliban-linked militants.

The businessmen were arrested in what the officials described as sweeping raids in the north of Afghanistan, as well as in Kabul.

At the White House briefing on Monday the administration officials did not mention anything in the House Republican briefing about intercepted data tracking financial transfers, people familiar with it said.